Theme an Rheme 主位与述位.ppt

The fourth class The first period the second period Theme / Rheme (主位、述位) The concept of Theme Rheme As we know, in the process of text production, the producers can only choose one single lexical item to put it into the sentence and then organize these respective sentences into a text. Actually, what the theory of theme and rheme describes is just a speaker or writer choice made independently of the propositional (陈述的，主张的) content of the message. In other words, we can say it is a decision made by speaker or writer on how to organize the information, where to start, so to speak, in presenting the message. * The concept of theme and rheme was first put forward by Mathesius(马泰休斯), one of the founders of the Prague School(布拉格学派).  1）His purpose to propose theme and rheme lay in studying different roles played by different elements of sentences in language communication  2）He found that the element in the front of the clause played a special role in the process of the communication and this special role was to serve as a starting point for what a speaker or writer wants to say.3) Mathesius called the element in the front of the clause “theme” while the rest part of the clause “rheme”.4) He pointed out that theme generally conveyed given information while rheme new. The Prague school’s terms of theme and rheme are accepted by the systemic-functional school(系统功能学派). Now, let’s look at Halliday’s viewpoint on theme rheme. The Theme is the element which serves as the point of departure of the message; it is that with which the clause is concerned. The remainder of the message, the part in which the theme is developed, is called in Prague School terminology the Rheme. As a message structure, therefore, a clause consists of a theme accompanied by a rheme; and the structure is expressed by the order-whatever is chosen as the theme is put first. Halliday 是从功能而不是从成分分布的角度对主位进行界定的。他认为：主位是信息（message）的起点（point of departure），是小句所关心的成分（the element with w