F U N C T I O N A L S E N T E N C E P E R S P E C T I V E

1. F U N C T I O N A L S E N T E N C E P E R S P E C T I V E

2. In studying the structure of a sentence, we are faced with the problem of dividing a sentence into two sections, one of them containing the starting point of the statement, and the other the new information for the sake of which the sentence has been uttered or written. This has been termed "functional perspective".

3. I made the trip out here for curiosity, just to see where you were intending to go. Here the words I made the trip out here are the starting point, and the rest of the sentence (for curiosity …. go) contains the new information. It cannot be said that every sentence must necessarily consist of two such sections. Some sentences (especially one-member sentences) cannot be divided up in this way.

4. There have been several terms proposed for this purpose, such as "psychological subject" and "psychological predicate", "lexi­cal subject" and "lexical predicate", "semantic subject" and "semantic predicate", and others. Some of these are distinctly unac­ceptable, as they either suggest a wrong view of the phenomena in question, or are incompatible with our general principles for analyzing language phenomena.

5. Thus, the terms "psychological' subject" and "psychological predicate", proposed by the German scholar H. Paul, obviously will not do, as they introduce a notion of individual psychology, which lies beyond the sphere of linguistic investigation. The terms "lexical subject" and "lexical predicate", proposed by Prof. A. Smirnitsky, will not do either, because they appear to take the whole problem out of the sphere of syntactic study and to include it into that of lexicology, which, however, has nothing to do with it.

6. We would rather avoid all terms built on the principle of com­bining the already existing terms "subject" and "predicate" with some limiting epithets, and use a pair of terms which have not yet been used to express any other kind of notion. The pair of terms best suited for this purpose would seem to be "theme" and "rheme", which came into use particularly in the works of several Czech linguists.

7. The terms "theme" and "rheme" are both derived from Greek, and are parallel to each other. The term "theme" comes from the Greek root the- 'to set', or 'establish', and means 'smth which is set or established'. The term "rheme" is derived from the root rhe- 'to say', or 'tell', and means 'smth which is said or told' (about that which was set or established beforehand).

8. The means of expressing a thematic or a rhematic quality of a word or phrase in a sentence to a great extent depend on the grammatical structure of the given language.

9. Thus, in a language with a widely developed morphological system and free word order; word order can be extensively used to show the difference between theme and rheme. For instance, word order plays an important part from this viewpoint in Russian. We may merely point out the dif­ference between such sentences as Старик вошел. and Вошел старик. In each case the word or the part of the sentence which comes last corresponds to the rheme, and the rest of the sentence - to the theme.

10. It is quite clear that no such variation would be possible in acorresponding English sentence. For instance, we could not in the sentence The old man came in. change the order of words so as to make the words the old man (the subject of the sentence) correspond to the rheme instead of to the theme. Such a word order would be impossible and we cannot make the words old man express the rheme without introducing further changes into the structure of the sentence.

11. In Modern English there are several ways of showing that a word or phrase corresponds either to the rheme or to the theme.

12. A method characteristically analytical is the construction it is ... that (also it is … who and it is... which) with the word or phrase representing the rheme enclosed between the words it is and the word that (who, which). For it is the emotion that matters. Emotion is in this way shown to represent the rheme of the sentence. But it was sister Janet's house that he considered his home. Sister Janet's house represents the rheme.

13. In the following sentence the adverbial modifier of place, here, is thus made the rheme: It was here that MrScogan elected to sit. In the following example a phrase consisting of no less than eleven words is made into the rheme by means of the it is . .. that construction. It was his use of the highly colloquial or simply the ungrammatical expression that fascinated her in particular,…

14. Another means of pointing out the rheme in a sentence is a particle (only, even, etc.) accompanying the word or phrase in question. Indeed a particle of this kind seems an almost infallible sign of the word or phrase being representative of the rheme: Only the children, of whom there were not many, appeared aware and truly to belong to their surroundings, for the over-excited games they played, dashing in and out among the legs of their elders, trying to run up the escalator that moved only down, and the like, were after all special games that could be played no­where but in the station by people who remembered that it was in the station they were. The particle only, belonging to the subject of the sentence, the children, singles it out and shows it torepresent the rheme of the sentence.

15. Another means of indicating the rheme of a sentence may sometimes be the indefinite article. Owing to its basic meaning of "indefiniteness" the indefinite article shows the new element in the sentence, which represents the rheme. Byopposition, the definite article will, in general, tend to point out that is already known, that is the theme.

16. Suddenly the door opened and a little birdlike elderly woman in a neat grey skirt and coat seemed almost to hop into the room. The woman herself is represented as a new element in the situation, obviously the same must be true of her clothes, and this meaning is further strengthened by the second indefinite article, the one before neat grey skirt and coat.

17. Now let us replace the first indefinite article bythe definite. The text then will be Suddenly the door, opened and the little bird­like elderly woman in a neat grey skirt and coat seemed almost to hop into the room. This would mean that the woman had been familiar in advance, and the news communicated in the sentence would be that she almost hopped into the room.

18. The indefinite article before neat grey skirt and coat would show that the infor­mation about her clothes is new, i.e. that she had not always been wearing that particular skirt and coat. This would still be a new bit of information but it would not be the centre of the sentence, because the predicate group seemed almost to hop into the room would still be more prominent than the group in a neat grey skirt and coat.

19. Finally, if the second indefinite article is replaced bythe definite, too, the text will be: Suddenly the door opened and the little birdlike elderly woman in the neat grey skirt and coat seemed almost to hop into the room. This would imply that both the elderly little woman with her birdlike look and her grey skirt and coat had been familiar before: she must have been wearing that skirt and coat always, or at least often enough for the people in the story and the reader to remember it. In this way the whole group the little birdlike elderly woman in the neat grey skirt and coat would be completely separated from the rheme-part of the sentence.

20. There are also some means of showing that a word or phrase represents the theme in a sentence. Sometimes this may be achieved byusing the definite article.

21. But there are other means of pointing out the theme as well. One of them, which includes both grammatical and lexical elements, is a loose parenthesis introduced bythe prepositional phrase as for (or as to), while in the main body of the sentence there is a personal pronoun representing the noun which is the centre of the parenthetical as-for-phrase:

22. As for the others, great numbers of them moved past slowly or rapidly, singly or in groups, carrying bags and parcels, asking for directions, perusing time­tables, … After the theme of the sentence has been stated in the prepositional phrase as for the others, the subject of the sentence, great numbers of them, specifies the theme (pointing out the quantitative aspect of the others) and the rest of the sentence represents the rheme, telling in some detail whatever the others were busy doing at the time.

23. Sometimes a word or phrase may be placed in the same posi­tion, without as for:The manuscript so wonderfully found, so won­derfully accomplishing the morning' s prediction, how was it to be accounted for? Here the first half of the sentence (up to the word prediction) represents the theme of the sentence, while the rest of it represents its rheme. The pro­noun it replaces the long phrase representing the theme.

24. That laughter - how well he knew it. The phrase that laughter must be said to represent the theme of the sentence: it announces what the sentence is going to be about.

25. To be continued.