Not all sentences can be divided into the theme and the rheme according to the information value of the sentence parts. Some sentences are informatively indivisible: they have the zero theme, so  they lack the starting point/thing of the information. Information indivisibility may be expressed by one-member sentence

Котнюк, Л. Г.

English

Zhytomyr State University Library

Liudmyla Kotniuk Zhytomyr State University Information Indivisibility in English Sentences One of the trends of modern linguistic research is the division of English sentences into three segments of structure: grammatical (subject – predicate - object), semantic (agent  - action - patient) and communicative (theme - transitional zone - rheme). The theme (topic) and  the rheme (comment) are two peaks of the „actual division“ of  sentences. Its purpose  is to reveal the correlative significance of the sentence parts from the point of view of their information value in a sentence-utterance, i.e. from the point of view of the their immediate semantic contribution to the total information of the sentence in the context of connected speech. The theme (topic) is what is known/given,  talked about  and the rheme (comment) is what is unknown/new, what is said about the topic.  This structure is independent of the syntactic ordering of subject, predicate and may be marked by word order: the theme stands at the beginning of the sentence and the rheme is at its end: 1. (Theme) My brother  (Rheme ) came yesterday.  The theme and the rheme of  this sentence are unmarked as they coincide respectively with the subject-group and the predicate-group taking their typical positions in the sentence: first the subject, then the predicate. 2. (Theme) Inside the house (Rheme) was his friend.  The theme of  this sentence is marked as it is expressed by a syntactical part of the sentence, which can’t take this initial position in emphatically neutral sentences.  The rheme of this sentence is also marked as it, though following the theme, is expressed by both the subject and the predicate. Besides the word-order, there are other formal means of expressing the distinction between the theme and the rheme: intonation, constructions with introducers, syntactic patterns of contrastive complexes, constructions with articles and other determiners, constructions with intensifying particles. Not all sentences can be divided into the theme and the rheme according to the information value of the sentence parts. Some sentences are informatively indivisible: they have the zero theme, so  they lack the starting point/thing of the information. Information indivisibility may be expressed by one-member sentences. For example: (1) Spring.  (2) A woderful  spring. Living at the mercy of this woman!  Sentences of this kind do not contain any subject or predicate: they consist of the principle part, which may be the only element  in  a  simple one-member unextended sentence (spring - example 1) or it may be modified by other secondary parts of the sentence in simple one-member extended sentence  (the principal parts are underlined:  spring, living - example 2). These sentences describe the existence of the things expressed in them or different emotional perception of reality. In two-member sentences information indivisibility is connected with their semantic structure. These sentences have the formal subject expressed by the  impersonal „it“ or introductory “it“/„there“, which are  devoid of any lexical meanings.  The „impersonal it“ („dummy  it“) is used as an empty subject with no meaning when talking about phenomena of nature, time, distance, a general state of things: It is  cold.  The introductory „it“ and „there“  are   used to fill the initial subject slot in the sentence, but in these structures the actual (notional) subject comes later: It is a pleasure to speak English. There is a hole in the floor. Sentences xpressing undivided information make a complex rheme. The purpose of such utterances is to inform of the existence or appearance of some phenomena, treated as a whole.. 

Information Indivisibility in English Sentences

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