Actual division of a sentence

§ The division of the sentence into notional parts can be called the "nominative division" (its alternative names are the "grammatical division" and the "syntactic division").

§ The actual division of the sentence (the "functional sentence perspective“), is to reveal the correlative significance of the sentence parts from the point of view of their actual informative role in an utterance, i.e. from the point of view of the immediate semantic contribution they make to the total information conveyed by the sentence in the context of connected speech.

§ The main components of the actual division of the sentence are the theme

and the rheme. Between the theme and the rheme are positioned intermediary, transitional parts of the actual division of various degrees of informative value (these parts are sometimes called "transition").

The theme expresses the starting point of the communication, i.e. it denotes an object or a phenomenon about which something is reported.

The rheme expresses the basic informative part of the communication, its contextually relevant centre.

§ The actual division of the sentence finds its full expression only in a concrete context of speech, therefore it is sometimes referred to as the "contextual" division of the sentence.

actual division of a sentence

1. DIRECT

the theme is expressed by the subject, and the rheme, by the predicate.

E.G. Mary is fond of poetry

2. INVERTED

the subject is the exposer of the rheme, while the predicate, accordingly, is

the exposer of the theme.

Among the formal means of expressing the distinction between the theme and the rheme there are such structural elements of language as

§ word-order patterns (E.G. Fred didn't notice the flying balloon. =* The one who didn't notice the flying balloon was Fred.),

§ intonation contours

§ constructions with introducers (E.G. Tall birches surrounded the lake. =* There were tall birches surrounding the lake.)

§ syntactic patterns of contrastive complexes (The costume is meant not for your cousin, but for you.= The costume, not the frock, is meant for you, my dear)

§ constructions with articles and other determiners (The man walked up and down the platform. = A man walked up and down the platform.)

§ constructions with intensifying particles (Mr. Stores had a part in the general debate. -*• Even Mr. Stores had a part in the general debate.)‏

Thus, the actual division of a sentencemakes up part of syntactic predication, because it strictly meets the functional purpose of predication as such, which is to relate the nominative content of the sentence to reality

E.G. "Isn't it surprising that Tim is so fond of poetry?"-

"But you are wrong. Mary is fond of poetry, not Tim."

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