Textual grammar: Theme

1. Textual grammar: Theme

2. Standards of textuality • Textuality: how does a text hang together internally? coherence • The means ot achieve coherence include theme-rheme organization • Others: cohesion; reference, lexical cohesion, conjunctive relations, ellipsis/substitution

3. Is this a text? However, nobody had seen one for months. He thought he saw a shape in the bushes. Mary had told him about the foxes. John looked out of the window. Could it be a fox?

4. Theme-Rheme • Theme-rheme in texts – realized at the level of clause • Theme: the point of departure of a message (clause); Rheme: the rest • realization in English: first constituent position in the clause • realization in German: position before the finite verb (Vorfeld)

5. Theme: system

6. Theme & metafunction Well, but then Ann surely wouldn‘t continuative structural conjunctive vocative modal finite textualinterpersonal Theme the best idea topical (= ideational) Theme be to join the group. Rheme

7. Theme: realization • Unmarked Theme: Subject I went to London yesterday. • Marked Theme: other than Subject Yesterday I went to London. • Nonpredicated, nonsubstitute Theme: cf. above. • Nonpredicated, substitute Theme or thematic equative (pseudo-cleft) unmarked: What the queen sent my uncle was a hatstand. marked:This hatstand is what the queen sent to my uncle. • Predicated Theme (cleft) It was the queenwho sent my uncle that hatstand.

8. Theme in text: text example (1) Britain has uncovered a plot by Israel to use forged British passports for Mossad secret service hit-men to attack opponents abroad. The discovery has led to a furious diplomatic row, and anIsraeli apology and assurance that it would not use British cover again. The eight forged passports were discovered by chance last summer in a bag inside a telephone booth in West Germany. The bag also contained a genuine Israeli passport and envelopes linking the document with an Israeli Embassy. All the papers were handed in to a British consulate-general and brought back to London. (Sunday Times, 15.3.87)

9. Theme in text: text example (2) Mackintosh, Charles Rennie, b. Glasgow 1968, d. London 1928. A resolute adversary of historic revivalism, M. was one of the most important precursors of 20th century rationalist architecture. As the leader of the Art Nouveau movement in Great Britain, the Scottish architect made a contribution of fundamental importance in reappraising the role of function in building, expressed in a style which draws often on ancient Celtic ornament and on the cultural traditions of Japan. When he was barely sixteen, M. entered John Hutchinson’s office as an articled pupil; from 1885 he attended evening classes at the Glasgow School of Art. In 18889 he was engaged as a draughtsman in the building firm of J.Honeyman and Keppie…In 1890, he was awarded a scholarship which enabled him to make a study tour in France and Italy…One year later, he participated in the opening exhibition of L’Art Nouveau in Paris…In 1897 he won the competition for the new building of the Glasgow School of Art, erected between 1898 and 1909. In 1898 he drew up a bold scheme for a concert hall on a circular plan, covered by a parabolic dome...

10. Theme in text • definition: By [thematic progression] we mean the choice and ordering of utterance themes, their mutual concatenation and hierarchy, as well as their relationship to hyperthemes of the superior text units…, to the whole text, and to the situation. (Daneš, 74) • two methods of analyzing theme in text • Prague School (e.g., Daneš, 74): functional sentence perspective, thematic progression • Systemic Functional Grammar (e.g., Martin, 92): thematic development

11. Theme in text • Prague School • analysis of text (1): T1 (Britain) R1 (has uncovered…) T2 (= R1) (The discovery) R2 (has led…) T3 (=R1) (The eight…) R3 (were discovered) T4 (=R3) (The bag…) R4 (also contained…) T5 (=R4) (All the papers…) R5 (were handed…)

12. Theme in text • Martin 92 distinguishes between: • macro-theme: text • hyper-theme: paragraph • theme: clause • macro-themes predict hyper-themes and hyper-themes predict sequences of clause themes; texts that do not make use of predicted patterns my be read as less coherent (Martin, 92, p.437) • analysis: • macro-theme: bold face • hyper-theme: italics • theme: underlined

13. Analysis according to Martin 92 Mackintosh, Charles Rennie, b. Glasgow 1968, d. London 1928. A resolute adversary of historic revivalism, M. was one of the most important precursors of 20th century rationalist architecture. As the leader of the Art Nouveau movement in Great Britain, the Scottish architect made a contribution of fundamental importance in reappraising the role of function in building, expressed in a style which draws often on ancient Celtic ornament and on the cultural traditions of Japan. When he was barely sixteen, M. entered John Hutchinson’s office as an articled pupil; from 1885 he attended evening classes at the Glasgow School of Art. In 1889 he was engaged as a draughtsman in the building firm of J.Honeyman and Keppie…In 1890, he was awarded a scholarship which enabled him to make a study tour in France and Italy…One year later, he participated in the opening exhibition of L’Art Nouveau in Paris…In 1897 he won the competition for the new building of the Glasgow School of Art, erected between 1898 and 1909. In 1898 he drew up a bold scheme for a concert hall on a circular plan, covered by a parabolic dome...

14. Theme in text • analysis of text 2, header plus first paragraph according to Martin, 92: • analysis of text 2, second paragraph: thematic development organized along a time line macro-theme hyper-theme theme

15. Thematic progression and text genres • text example (1): • a typical thematic organization of expository text that displays features of argumentation (but not the only possible one) • rhetorical purpose: mixture ofreporting events and evaluating them • text example (2): • a typical thematic organization of a recount text that is organized along a time line (but not the only possible one)

16. References • DaneŠ, 1974. Functional Sentence Perspective and the Organisation of the Text. In DaneŠ F. (ed), 1974. Papers on Functional Sentence Perspective, pp. 106-128, The Hague, Mouton • Halliday 1985/1994. Introduction to Functional Grammar. Arnold, London (chapter 3) • Halliday & Hasan, 1976. Cohesion in English. Longman, London (chapter 5) • Martin, 1992. English Text. System and Structure. Benjamins, Amsterdam (chapter 4)

17. Assignment 4 (1) Do exercises 1, 2 and 3 on pages 37 and 38 of the handout. (2) Analyse Texts 1 and 2 on pages 38/39 of the handout. (3) Analyze the hydrogen text in terms of Theme. What does the kind of thematic development tell you about this text? Can you detect a structure (which parts of the text are about what)?

18. The hidden strength of hydrogen Hydrogen links up with other atoms in many ways, forming a wide variety of compounds, from methane to DNA. Latest research reveals the strong hydrogen bond - a previously unknown way for hydrogen to form compounds. Of all the chemical elements, hydrogen is the simplest in structure, and first in the diversity of its chemical behaviour. The element itself exists as the molecule H2 which is well known as the lightest of all gases. Although industry uses this gas on a large scale it is rarely encountered in everyday life except to fill balloons. However in 25 years time this may be the gas which is piped into our homes to fuel boilers and cookers - once we have used up supplies of natural methane gas, CH4. Hydrogen burns to form water, and hence is cleaner than gases containing carbon. Chemists find hydrogen particularly interesting because of the versatility of its chemical bonding, as apparent from the many different types of compound that it can form. The hydrogen atom consists of a nucleus containing a single proton with an electron in orbit around it. This orbit can accommodate at most two electrons, so hydrogen can form only one covalent bond - a bond in which a pair of electrons is shared by two atoms - to another element. This it does in most of ist compounds. When bonded to carbon as in CH4 and the many other organic compounds with C-H bonds, the hydrogen atom is firmly held by this covalent link to the carbon atom. On the other hand, hydrogen can form stronger bonds with oxygen yet still be mobile. Thus in water, H2O, the hydrogen atoms exchange between different oxygen atoms billions of times per second. In some compounds, namely acids, the molecules are so averse to the hydrogen they contain that they will readily donate the hydrogen to other molecules. One such is hydrogen chloride, HCl, and textbooks often write this process as HCl H+ + Cl-.

19. But H+ is a "bare" proton, and as it has an overwhelming attraction to any electron pair in its vicinity it cannot exist apart from a molecule. Thus the H+ from an acid is drawn immediately to another molecule, especially to any atom within that molecule which has a pair of electrons in its outer shell, unattached to any other atom. Oxygen and nitrogen atoms are particularly attractive to H+ because of the lone-pair electrons they contain. Some acids, such as "magic acid", are so strong that they can donate their protons to almost any other molecule whether it has a "free" electron-pair or not. "Magic acid" is a mixture of fluorosulphuric acid, HSO3F, and antimony pentafluoride, SbF5. The acid is so strong that when sulphuric acid is dissolved in it, the sulphuric acid is forced to play the part of accepting a hydrogen and so becomes H3SO4+! The behaviour of acids is generally observed in water. The solvent (H2O) is the recipient of the proton, as for example in HCl + H2O H3O+ + Cl-. H3O+ is called the oxonium ion and is commonly regarded as the key chemical species in acid solutions. But this is only part of the story. The oxonium ion combines with three further water molecules to form H9O4+. This complex ion is held together by hydrogen bonds. This type of chemical bonding is unique to hydrogen, hence the name. Recently chemists have become aware that hydrogen bonding is itself of two kinds - weak (or normal) hydrogen bonding and strong hydrogen bonding. The latter type has implications in several areas, especially in the chemistry of fluoride (F-); it also poses questions that current theories of chemical bonding cannot answer.