Linearity

The dog barked several times. The theme→rheme sequence is unmarked.

The SVO sequence is unmarked, e.g. I’ve read the book.

The deviation from the theme→rheme sequence is marked

The deviation from the SVO, e.g. The book, I’ve read.

J. Firbas came to the conclusion that while in Czech, markedness is caused by the deviation from the theme→rheme sequence, in English, markedness is caused by the deviation from the grammatical word order. It is important to take into account that the carriers of communicative dynamism need not only be single words. The elements form hierarchic structures – units and fields. The above elements the dog, the book are noun phrases, representing one unit in the given field. A unit represented by a word in one language may be represented by a morpheme in another language

She was eating (theme – transition – rheme).

Jed-l-a (rheme – transition – theme).

Semantics

J. Firbas found out that the relations among the contents of language units (words and morphemes) operate as an important factor of FSP. He introduced highly abstract semantic functions called dynamic semantic functions, which operate irrespective of word order. They are similar to static semantic functions like ACTOR, ACTION, PATIENT, GOAL OF THE ACTION, CIRCUMSTANCE, but they are more abstract and are dynamic because they may change with the use of the given element in the act of communication. J. Firbas distinguishes two scales of dynamic semantic functions: the Presentation Scale (P-scale) and the Quality Scale (Q-scale).

Presentation Scale

Scene (Setting) → Presentation (Existence/Appearance) → Phenomenon

Theme – transition – rheme

A dog (phenomenon) barked (presentation) in a distance (scene).

Quality Scale

(Scene →) Quality Bearer → Quality → Specification(s)

Theme – theme – transition (in the absence of specification rheme) – (rheme)

Our dog (theme) barked (transition) at our neighbour (rheme) yesterday (theme).

Context

According to J. Firbas, there are three basic types of context:

Verbal: I met my teacher. She said ... (she refers to my teacher)

situational: Open the window, will you? (the window, the implicit and the explicit you)

experiential: I met Jack Nicholson and Miloš Forman ... The famous actor said ...(the famous actor refers to J. Nicholson)

The oppositions old–new, known–unknown, context dependent–context independent are not black-and-white oppositions but represent gamuts where the amount of oldness or newness etc. is a matter of degree. The operation of decontextualization is realized by other factors (word order, prosodic features, semantics): It was him! (cf. I saw him. versus I saw him, not her!).

According to the extent of the operation of context over a sentence, J. Firbas distinguishes three instance levels:

• ordinary instance (“no operation” of context)

In a far-away country a rich king had three daughters.

• first instance (partial influence of context)

I sent him a letter yesterday.

• second instance (all the elements are influenced by the context except one)

[You haven’t called Mary as you promised.]

But I did call her! (Yesterday, at seven sharp!)