Thematic Structure of the Clause. Recognising Themes and their Metafunctions in Systemic Functional Framework
Thematic Structure of the Clause. Recognising Themes and their Metafunctions in Systemic Functional Framework

Recognising Themes and their Metafunctions in Systemic Functional Framework

Summary/Abstract: An extremely important aspect of functional grammar is the way information is structured in communication. This structure is built with the help of grammar and it generally happens at the level of the clause. In Systemic Functional Grammar there are two parallel and interrelated systems of analysis that concern the structure of the clause regarding the organization of the message. The first one is called information structure, and the second one is called thematic structure and it involves constituents that are labelled Theme and Rheme. The first part of this paper is concerned with the most common difficulties encountered in identifying the Themes and the second part discusses the metafunctions of these Thematic structures.We are going to analyse some of the most common cases: the yes/ no words, the adjuncts, the time expressions, the question words, the relative pronouns, the reference items, the temporal expressions. An important case is represented by the Subject it as unmarked topical Theme. Another problem is represented by the longer Theme units. In the last part of this paper we draw up the tests which should be made in order to identify longer Themes.

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