Arguments for seeing theme- rheme and topic-comment as separate functional structures

• Main Author: LaPolla, Randy J.
• Other Authors: Martin, J. R.
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 2021
• Subjects: Humanities::Linguistics; Systemic Functional Language; Linguistics
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/145791
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

In this chapter I would like to talk about aspects of the SFL approach to communication that I think are important to all linguists but have been overlooked or obscured in some other approaches. These include recognition of the importance of Theme-Rheme; the separation of Theme-Rheme and ‘given’-‘ne...