It is well known fact that the notional parts of the sentence form together the nominative meaning of the sentence. The division of the sentence into notional parts can be called the nominative division a long side of nominative division. The idea of the actual division has been put forward in theoretical linguistics. Its purpose is to reveal the correlative significance of the sentence parts from the point of view of their actual informative role in an utterance.
The main components of the actual division are the “theme” and the “rheme”.
Theme expresses the starting point of the communication.
Rheme expresses the basic informative part of the communication.
Between the theme and the rheme are positioned intermediary parts of the actual division. The theme may or may not coincide with the subject of the sentence. The rheme with a predicate. The actual division finds its full expression only in a concrete context of speech. If it is stylistically neutral construction the theme is the subject and the rheme is the predicate and this kind of actual division is direct. The actual division in which the rheme is expressed by the subject is inverted.
The means of expressing the rheme :
- Lexical meanings – particles (only,even)
- Logical stress-
- Change of syntactic structure (It was he who did it)
- Passive voice.
Means of expressing theme
- Definite article.
- Word order.
The actual division is an active means of expressing functional meaning.
И.Ф.Вардуаль: Division which presents the ‘basic item’ and the ‘nucleus of the message’, ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’, ‘given’ and ‘new’ was called by V.Mathesius “the actual division of the sentence” as distinguished from its “formal division”. Actual division is the result of the influence of context and situation.
Intonation is a very important means of actual division.
К.Г.Крушельницкая/А.В. де Грот: actual division is the reflection of the speaker’s attitude towards what is said. This point of view is less acceptable.
The point of the actual division of the sentence is in the lingual limitation of the amount of information carried by the message.
