Marked And Unmarked Theme Analysis

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Marked and unmarked themes
The concept of marked and unmarked theme. An unmarked feature is the ordinary, expected, usual form, while marked feature is unusual in some way, less expected or less common occcuring. In the explanation before, theme is usually the subject of sentence. So, the unmarked theme occur in statement (a declarative sentence) is the subject. A marked theme occur in anything else.
Unmarked theme can occur :
a. The subject may consist of a single word.
Example :
Marry had alittle lamb
Theme rheme

b. The subject may consist of a non phrase containing pre-and/or post modifiers. Example :
Its fleece was white as snow
Theme rheme

c. The subject may consist of a noun clause.
Example :
What i want is a god cup of tea
Theme rheme

Marked theme is included adverbials, fronted object, and fronted head of a verb phrase. Adverbial as theme may be adverbs or adverb phrases or they may be preposional phrases.
a. A sentence with an adverb as theme and one with a preposional phrase as theme respectively.
Example :
Merrily we roll along
Theme subject/rheme predicate

On Saturday night we went out dancing
Theme subject/rheme predicate

b. Fronted objects as marked nominal themes and fronted subject complement. Exanple :
A bag of gold the king would pay
Theme subject/rheme predicate

A …show more content…

For exampple it was great deal of publicity that the book received in china, it was the book tha received a great deal of publicity in china or it was in china that the book received a great deal of publicity. the theme of an it –structure is not it but rather the element which occurs after the verb to be. It simply acts as an empty subject which allows a certain element such as the book or in china to be placed near the beginning of the clause and to be interreted as its theme, that is what the message is

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