西方语言学论文A Diachronic Analysis of Theme Rheme Theory

1、a diachronic analysis of theme/ rheme theory1. introduction2. literature riview3. analysis of theme/rheme ideas by weil, mathesius, firbas and halliday3.1 henri weil3.2 mathesius3.3 firbas3.4 halliday (每部分包括个人的理论基础、定义、贡献、不足四小部分)4. conclusion 1. introduction theme/rheme theory is an important functio

2、nal linguistic theory and applied in many areas, such as english teaching, translation studies etc. while more and more attention is drawn into its application, the research to its history and development seems to be kind of neglected,. however, the knowledge of the history will definitely for its u

3、se as a whole. out of this reason, this paper will make a diachronic study of theme and rheme theory. up to now, the researches about theme and rheme focus on its application, especially the application of hallidays theory. besides, some literature is about the history, but they are only concerned w

4、ith part of the history of development. a full research is still blank. in this case, this paper is necessary. the following part can be divided into parts:2. literature review3. analysis of theme/rheme ideas by weil, mathesius, firbas and hallidaythe terms of theme and rhem are the product of funct

5、ional linguistics. to be exact, it originates from the founder of prague school, mathesius. relevant researches also take mathesius as the initioator of theme/rheme and their researches begin with mathesius. however, mathesius ideas about theme and rheme are mainly inspired by another french scholar

6、, henri weil. therefore, a full study of the development of theme/rheme can not neglect weil. in this case, the prominent scholars who make remarkable contribution to theme/rheme theory is weil, mathesius, firbas and halliday. in this part, i will illustrate theme/ rheme of the four researchers from

7、 four points of view: the theotetical base, the definition of theme/ rheme, the contributions, and the problems. of the four, the first two are just objective descriptions of the theory while the last two are mainly personal ideas to be shared. 3.1 henri weilhenri weil is the pioneer in the field of

8、 functional sentence perspective (fsp) and his ideas are the chief inspiration to mathesius ideas. functional sentence perspective (fsp) is a theory of linguistic analysis which refers to an analysis of utterances (or texts) in terms of the information they contain. this theory is the basis of weils

9、 ideas and from then on, the following three people all take fsp as their theoretical foundation. according to weil, the movement of ideas is expressed by the word order, while the syntactical movement by terminations (endings). in his opinion, a sentence contains a point of departure (an initial no

10、tion) and a goal of discourse. the point of departure is equally present to the speaker and to the hearerit is their rallying point, the ground on which they meet. this is called the theme. the goal of discourse presents the very information that is to be imparted to the hearer. this is called the r

11、heme. weil claimed that the movement from the initial notion (theme) to the goal of discourse (rheme ) reveals the movement of the mind itself. language may use different syntactic constructions, but the order of ideas remains basically the same. weil also found that usually the theme stands before

12、rheme, but sometimes the goal of discourse goes before the initial notion. weil called the latter one the pathetic (emotional) order and looked upon it as a vehicle of emotion. personal analysisfrom the theory weil bases on and his definition of theme/rheme, we can see that theme/rheme is originally

13、 defined from the viewpoint of given(known) and new information. moreover, his theme/rheme is totally dependent on the information status and free from the linear restrictions. therefore, his theme/rheme can occur in any place of the sentence. the critearia to judge theme/rheme is only whether it is

14、 known or not by both speaker and reader. however, according to weil, no matter how the sentence is organized, the process in minds is always in the process of from theme to rheme. they put rheme in front of theme is just because of the requirements of special situation which lay a foundation for ha

15、llidays theory to distinguish between unmarked and marked themes. in a word, according to weil, the given information is theme while the new information is rheme. it is the definition in the level of mind but not the syntactical restrictions.3.2 mathesiusmathesius, the founder of prague school, also

16、 takes fsp as his theoretical foundation. the difference is that he called it as the theory of actual division. he conceived of the sentence from the point of view of the information it conveyed. in the 1930s, mathesius revised traditional grammatical terms such as subject and predicate, and replace

17、d them with a functional linguistic approach: theme and rheme. he argued that it consists of two basic parts. the first part is the theme, which is something already known from the preceding context or as information taken for granted, and which does not contribute anything new to the information to

18、 be transmitted. the second part is the rheme, which contains all the new information to be transmitted and substantially enriches the hearers knowledge. word order principle personal analysiscompared with weils ideas, mathesius theory has the following features: first, like weil, he is also seen it

19、 from the perspective of information conveyed. second, his definition is kind of different from that of weils in that it is defined based on three criteiria. : (a). theme/ rheme position in the sentence is restricted by the linear arrangement, that is, the first part of the sentence is theme and the

20、 second part is rheme. 刘润清 封宗信 also explained this point by the example of “john” killed mary. (b). his theme should be the known information while the rheme is the new information, this point is the same as the definition of weil. (c). it is also considered from the perspective of the contribution

21、theme and rheme have for the development of communication. this point arouses the interest of firbas to explore the laws determining the distribution of information, and then the communicative dynamism is initiated. if weils definition of theme and rheme is completely determined by the mind, mathesi

22、us definition combines the movement of mind and the syntactical representation. therefore his theme/rheme are defined by its position in the sentence and it is known or not. it seems that mathesius definition is more comprehensive, but actually these restrictions incur many questions. problems accor

23、ding to mathesius, the theme should be the first part of the sentence and also the known information. however, in reality, this is not always the case. it sometimes occurs that the first part of the sentence is also new to speaker and hearer. we can also take “john killed mary” for example. if it is

24、 a piece of news, both the speaker and the audience do not know who john and mary are. in this case, the essential information is not mary or killed mary, but the event that someone killed someone. in this way, mathesius definition contradicts to each other, but he did not provide any rank for the i

25、mportance of the three critearia. this problem seems to be solved by firbas to some degree. 3.3 firbasalso taking fsp as the general theoretical background, firbas research mainly focuses on the laws determining the distribution of degree of cd over linguistic elements capable of carrying them. that

26、 is to say, his research concentrates on the distribution of cd. by cd, firbas refers to a property of communication displayed in the course of the development of the information. the degree of cd is the effect contributed by a linguistic element, or the extent to which the element contributes to th

27、e development of the communication, for it “pushes the communication forward”. firbas said that all linguistic elements are capable of carrying degrees of cd as long as they convey some meaning. firbas defined fsp as “the distribution of various degrees of cd” which can be explained as: the initial

28、elements of a sequence carry the lowest degree of cd, and with each step forward, the degree of cd becomes incremental till the element that carries the highest. thus, the rule may be: the theme at the beginning, the transition in the middle, and the rheme at the end of the sentence. personal analys

29、iscompared with the above two people, firbas, like them, adhere to fsp, and develop fsp to a deeper level, that is, he has a good research on the distribution of information, which is valued by cd. in his opinion, any element -sentence, phrase, word, morpheme may be singled out in order to establish

30、 a sharp opposition (contrast). take “john was reading the newspaper” for example. the stressed “was” indicates it is the information that is to be imparted, in opposition to the present tense, and that all other elements are given information. in this way, according to weils definition of theme/rhe

31、me, “was” the theme part and all other parts are rheme. however, in the viewpoint of mathesius, the case is different because mathesius theme should be given information but also the first part of the sentence. for this sentence, firbas explanation is that the only element conveying new information

32、is contextually independent, whereas all the other elements conveying known information are contextually dependent. elements become contextually dependent and in consequence carry the lowest degree of cd. they assume this function irrespective of the position they occupy within the linear arrangemen

33、t. this indicates that the theme not necessarily occur at the initial place. therefore, strictly speaking, firbass definition is much more similar to weils ideas for theme/rheme. firbas explained theme/rheme from the contextual dependence/indepence aspect, therefore avoids the problem of mathesius.

34、it means that the firs part of the sentence can not be theme. theme/rheme is free from the linear restriction. what is more, firbas suggests that the distributional field may be entirely contextually independent, so the theme may not always be contextually dependent. contextually dependent elements,

35、 however, are always thematic. on the other hand, non-thematic elements are always contextually independent, but not every contextually independent element is non-thematic. in this way, firbas further makes theme and rheme free from the criteas made by mathesius. theme and rheme can only be judged i

36、n the specific context they occur. in a word, firbas defined theme/rheme from the aspect of cd and context. this enriches the theme/rheme theory and solve mathesius problem.problemsalthough firbas made great contribution to the theme/rheme theory, his theme/rheme theory is not unproblematic. first,

37、his definition is defined that theme is the part carrying the lowest degree of cd, while rheme the highest. however, in his definition there is also the implication that the theme at the beginning, the transition in the middle, and the rheme at the end of the sentence, because he initial elements of

38、 a sequence carry the lowest degree of cd, and with each step forward, the degree of cd becomes incremental till the element that carries the highest. taken it into careful consideration, there are also contradiction in his own theory for the reason that the initial part does not always carry lower

39、degree of cd than the latter part. firbas also agreed this point by that a known or unknown agent expressed by the subject appears to be communicatively less important than an unknown action expressed by the finite verb and/or an unknown goal (expressed by the object or the adverbial element of plac

40、e) at towards which the action is directed, but the situation is different if the subject is accompanied by a verb expressing existence or appearance on the scene and possibly also by an adverbial element of place or time, under whose circumstances, provided the subject is contextually independent,

41、it will carry the highest degree of cd. he further proves this by the example in order to see his friend, he went to prague.he went to prague to see his friend. a contextually independent infinitive of purpose carries a lower degree of cd when occurring finally. 待添加的隐藏文字内容3seen from this contradicti

42、on, it seems that 3.4 hallidayhalliday is famous for it systemic functional grammar. he develops the ideas of weil and the prague school, thus established his theme/rheme theory. halliday treats language as the way to realize social functions, so his theories mainly focus on how the language serve t

43、he social functions. therefore, though his theme/rheme theory s from the previous three peoples ideas but has great difference. in his opinion, 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

44、 part in which the theme is developed, is called in prague school terminology the rheme. as a message structure, 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 (:37). “the theme can be identified as that e

45、lement which comes in first position in the clause.” besides, in systemic functional grammar, theme/rheme as well as conhesion is the way to realize the textual function, one of the three metafuctions of halliday.personal analysishalliday indeed takes the fsp, but with development, his theme/theme t

46、heory serves mainly as a way to make a texture cohesive so that the text can possess texture. his term of theme has become a completely structural one. therefore, the way to judge theme correspondingly take the structural means, that is the element in first position of the clause, in other words, th

47、e leftmost part of the clause is the theme, and the remainder part is rheme. as for the consideration of given information or not, halliday leaves this to his another theory, namely, information structure. therefore, halliday realized the distinction between theme/rheme theory and information struct

48、ure. this is one of his great contributions to the theme/rheme theory. from above analysis, we can see that the definition of theme/rheme of the three people is in the trouble of the linear arrangement of sentence and the giveness of information, therefore, self- contradiction appears in their own ideas. different from them, halliday divide the syntactic structure and the information conveyed to two systems in which themerheme is entirely the stru