Friday 15 April 2016

Theme + Rheme

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 529):
One way of signalling what is thematic is by putting it first in the clause, as is done in English, where everything up to and including the first experiential element constitutes the speaker’s chosen point of departure. … The remainder of the clause constitutes the body of the message, labelled grammatically as the “Rheme”.