Re: Results of Poll by Email No. 27

Christophe wrote:

>>>
I don't think you can discuss the most important part of a sentence in
terms of "subject" and "predicate" which are after all syntactic
notions, while the notion of "importance" is rather semantic. To
discuss the "importance" of something, I think we must discuss in
terms of "theme and rheme" or "topic and comment". The theme or topic
is "what we talk about", and the rheme or comment is "what we have to
say about it".
[...]
Example (best seen with a monospace font):
This man is building the house.
--------|---------------------
Subject |       Predicate
 Theme  |         Rheme
[...]
This man is building the house.
--------|---------------------
Subject |       Predicate
 Rheme  |         Theme

<<<

I'm not sure whether this is going to make things more or less clear,
but I couldn't let this discussion pass without mentioning that Telona
has an obligatory theme-rheme structure to its sentences, so that you
have to be completely aware of exactly which bits of information are
known to your listener before you plan a Telona sentence.

For example, the above two versions of 'This man is building the
house.' would come out, respectively, as:

1. Le tane mís tas rùldi lelko-chelyanvè.

[le ta:ne mi:s ta:s 4u:lD1 lelgoxeld_jaFPe]
{l tane mís tas rùldi l Vl-cho-Vl-kelya-nve}
{the man thís act-on buìld the+ inc + house -as}

2. Le tas rùldi lelko-chélyanvè tane mis.

[le ta:s 4u:lD1 lelgoxeld_jaFPe ta:ne mi:s]
{l tas rùldi l Vl-cho- Vl-kelya-nve tane mis}
{the act-on buìld the+ inc + house -as man this}

The end of the theme is marked by an acute accent.  So, ignoring 'le'
(a sort of 'the' word, marking the fact that the identity of the man
is known to the listener but has not been mentioned recently in the
conversation), these sentences consist of the same two halves,
corresponding to 'this man' and 'building a house'.  In each case,
theme precedes rheme, as it must in Telona.

Jonathan.

[reply to jonathan underscore knibb at hotmail dot com]
--
'O dear white children casual as birds,
Playing among the ruined languages...'
Auden/Britten, 'Hymn to St. Cecilia'
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