Functional sentence perspective: theme and rheme

The starting point of this short paper is included in a question: What elements must
be provided to make a sentence understandable, in conformity with its author’s intention?

Sometimes facing a new clause one can perfectly understand all component
elements, or even more, point out all syntactical aspects, but still the sentence remains
impossible to understand.

For example, we don’t know what does exactly mean an author of this sentence: ‘He
bought a red one’. We can easily say that ‘he’ is a subject, ‘bought’ is a verb and ‘a red one’
stays for a direct object, but what this is exactly about? ‘He’ refers to an old friend, Peter, or
to a boy, Charlie? Has Peter bought a red car, or perhaps Charlie is the one who bought a red
lollipop and has already enjoyed it?

This observation leads us to the first conclusion:

The highest linguistic unit is not a sentence, but a bunch of sentences

connected coherently (Czachur 2009:298).

Thus, any sentence, if forms part of a text, has to be decoded within the framework
of its context, beyond a grammatical or syntactical analysis. That results indeed from textual
communicative function, i.e., the internal organization and communicative nature of a text
(Cfr. Halliday and Mathiessen 2004: 5), which

enables the clause to be packed in ways which make it effective given its
purpose and its context (Eggins 1994: 273).

Such interpretation of a sentence is known as a functional sentence perspective. Its

concepts were laid down by Jan Firbas around the year 1950 on the basis of linguistic work
of Vilem Mathesius (Cfr. Wikipedia).

Functional perspective isolates any possible meanings (communication variants) of a

given sentence, that

could be – to put it simply – responses for different questions (Dobrzyńska

1991:146).

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 Hence, any particular sentence may bring different sense, if considered to be a
response for a different question. For example, the sentence ‘Peter has bought a red car’
may reply to the question: ‘What has bought Peter?’, or: ‘Which colour has got a car Peter
has bought?’, or: ‘What did Peter do with the money he has won in a lottery?’, or even: ‘How
are you, guys?’. Each time question changes, a new portion of information – connected with
a different part of our sentence – is provided; despite the fact that its syntactical structure
do not change.

As explained by Dobrzyńska,

As far as we do not determine a communicational purpose of a sentence,

which means we do not isolate a part notifying some subject-matter, in
fact we will not understand its significance, even if we know all meanings
of used words perfectly, and even if we are able to define every syntactical
association (1991: 147).

Functional sentence perspective is of a systemic nature. The results of this analytical

perspective (isolated parts of a sentence), as well as all elements used to signalise these
parts, fall within a system of an adequate language.

Scholars disagree on how many elements could be isolated as a result of an

application of functional sentence perspective. However, a dual approach seems to prevail,
as put by already mentioned Vilem Mathesius:

A starting point of an utterance, which is what is known (or at last easily

comprehensible) and a core of the utterance, which is what the speaker is
saying about this starting point (or because of the starting point) (1971: 7).

In later works different terms has been adapted. And so, we can read about a ‘topic’
and a ‘comment’ (Cfr. LaPolla 2018), or a ‘topic’ and a ‘focus’, or a ‘theme’ and a ‘rheme’.
The last pair occurs in many contemporary analyses (Cfr. Dejica 2010).

Summing up, theme is defined as

the element which serves as the point of departure of the message; it is

that which locates and orients the clause within its context (Halliday 2004:
64).
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 Whilst rheme could be defined as

everything else that follows in the sentence which consists of what the
speaker states about, or in regard to, the starting point of the utterance
(Brown and Yule, 1983: 126-7).

When it comes to particular features that signalise different functional parts of a

sentence, in spoken language this function is perform by the intonation of the utterance:
both theme and rheme are marked by prosodic signs: anticadence, cadence, accent (stress)
and pause (Cfr. Paducheva 1978: 60-1).

Other strategies can be applied in order to isolate a rhematic part of a clause from
the semiotic one. Andrzej Bogusławski, for example, singles out an elimination contrasting
procedure. This strategy consist in juxtaposition of a new content of an utterance with its
contradiction. He exemplifies it with a sentence: ‘The plum I take is yellow’. Contrasting, an
opposite clause emerges: ‘The plum I take is not dark blue but yellow’. A juxtaposed part of a
sentence is isolated as a rheme (Cfr. 1977: 38).

Because the essence of the thematic part of a sentence consists in directing a sender
and the receiver, a theme can be omitted provided that it is obvious to what refers.
Accordingly, to a question ‘Who has bought a red car?’ one can respond only with an one-
word rheme: ‘Peter’ (Cfr. Dobrzyńska 1991: 149).

An usual syntactical order of a clause states that theme is a first part and then occurs
rheme. But it had been already noticed by Mathesius that exists a different word order
characterised by a rheme passing in a clause to the front, leaving a theme behind. As
summarised by Jan Firbas,

putting elements in the known-unknown sequence creates objective word

order, putting them in the reverse sequence creates subjective word order
(1979: 30).
The opposition of an objective and subjective order is very important when
discerning speech styles. The subjective one is way more emphatic and combines with
transferring a sentence accent.

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 In consequence, scholars introduce some sub-division to the dual concept of
thematic and rhematic functional perspective. For example, Dobrzyńska (Cfr. 1991:150)
offers some terms regarding a subjective rheme: a ‘contrasting rheme’ or an ‘accentuated
rheme’. Both terms link with rhemes that occur at the beginning of a clause ad play an
emphatical role. Speaking now on theme, she brings up a ‘zero theme’: this term is used
when dealing with some short clauses that describe weather (‘It rains’) or when a clause
introduces a story (‘Once upon a time there was…’).

Nevertheless, the point of departure for this short paper was the question: What
elements must be provided to make a sentence understandable, in conformity with its
author’s intention? To answer that, the method of functional sentence perspective was
applied. The above analysis shows that an irreducible part of a meaning lies in rheme. But
even if it is so, the sentence that consists only in a rhematic element is still not
understandable when a context is not provided. If one wishes to fully understand a phrase
uttered by its interlocutor, in most situations he needs more than only a rheme.

That leads to the next questions: ‘What role plays context in understanding a clause?’
‘What is the relation between theme, rheme and context?’ ‘How to build good sentences in
a communicative way?’ These and other more or less theoretical questions could contribute
to the further exploration of the subject.

Bibliography

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