CLAUSE AS MESSAGE
Text 3-10 The ‘North Star’ text
3.7 Predicated themes
There is one further resource which figures prominently in the organization of the clause as a message. This is the system of THEME PREDICATION, which involves a particular combination of thematic and informational choices. Here are some examples from spoken discourse:
it was Janethat started it
it wasn’tthe jobthat was getting me down is it Swedenthat they come from?
it was eight years agothat you gave up smoking
Any element having a representational function in the clause can be marked off by predication in this way. Let us go back to the duke, the aunt and the teapot — but perhaps with a slight variation: corresponding to the queen sent my uncle that hatstandwe could have:
it was the queen who sent my uncle that hatstand it was my uncle the queen sent that hatstand it was that hatstand the queen sent my uncle
This system resembles that of THEME IDENTIFICATION (Section 3.2 above), in that it does identify one element as being exclusive at that point in the clause. Both are in fact equative constructions. But there are also differences between the two. Let us take one of the above examples and derive a paradigm from it, controlling for information focus:
it wasn’t the jobthat was getting me down [exclusive: job as Theme or New]
the jobwasn’t getting me down
[non-exclusive: job as Theme or (marked) New]
the job wasn’t what was getting me down [exclusive: job as Theme or (marked) New]
what was getting me down wasn’t the job [exclusive: job as Rheme or New]
The neutral variant of the clause lacks the ‘equative’ feature: none of the elements is identified as the unique filler of the role. The identifying and predicated forms share the equative feature; but they differ in the choice of Theme, and in the mapping of Theme + Rheme onto Given + New. In the identifying type, the job is either non-thematic or, if thematic, then marked for informational status. In other words, the cost of choosing the job as Theme is that it becomes strongly foregrounded information — just as it is in the neutral form of the clause; the meaning is something like ‘take special note: this is improbable, or contrary to expectation’ (for a corpus-based investigation of the uses of theme predication, seeCollins, 1991).
P r e d i c a t e d t h e m e s
In the predicating type, on the other hand,the jobretains its thematic status; but it also carries the focus of information without such additional foregrounding: the conflation of Theme with New is a regular feature. The sense is of course contrastive, because of the exclusive equation:
it wasn’t the jobthat was getting me down ‘it was something else’
— but there is no implication that the proposition is difficult to accept.
It is this mapping of New and Theme, in fact, that gives the predicated theme construction its special flavour. The difference may be felt from some other pairs of agnate clauses:
Text 3-11
A: Craig was saying, when we were driving over here, about in Sweden, you know, when Nokia — is it Sweden that they come from?
B: Finland.
A: Finland or ... anyway one of those Scandinavian countries, ... the mobile is used for everything, like — B: Opening the garage door and letting the kids in the house and ...
Contrast is Sweden where/the place they come from?.
A: I was only 29 back then. I had the whole of my life ahead of me.
B: 29? That means it was eight years ago that you gave up smoking.
Contrast eight years ago was when/the time you gave up smoking.
A: It was on fire and that was the first day after it came back from getting fixed.
B: The horn was on fire was it?
C: It was the wire going into the horn that burnt out.
A: Was it?
Contrast the wire going into the horn was what burnt out.
The predicated Theme structure is frequently associated with an explicit formulation of contrast:it was not . . .,it was . . .,who/which. . .; for example (from the report of the Sydney Morning Herald’s London correspondent on the publication of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, 21 January 1982):
And, say the authors, it was Mary Magdalen, not Mary the Mother of Jesus, who has been the real, if secret, object of Mariolatry cults down the ages.
Here, the Theme is And. . .(it was) Mary Magdalen, not Mary the Mother of Jesus, (who). In such cases, the contrast between the two Marys clearly indicates that both should be read as New. But even without the contrast being made explicit, the unmarked focus still falls on the Theme; hence this structure is often used by writers to signal that this is the reading that is intended.
Since tonic prominence is not marked in writing, the predication has the additional
function in written English of directing the reader to interpret the information structure in the intended way. Suppose we have the sequence:
†John’s father wanted him to give up the violin. His teacher persuaded him to continue.
In the second sentence, the natural place for the tonic accent is continue, which makes the effective contrast that between giving up and continuing. If we replace this with:
John’s father wanted him to give up the violin. It was his teacher who persuaded him to continue.
the tonic accent now falls on teacher; the fact that John continued is taken as given, and the contrast is between his teacher’s attitude and that of his father.
It may be helpful here to give the full thematic analysis: see Figure 3-22. Version (a) shows the local thematic structure; here both Themes are unmarked (it and who are both Subjects). Version (b) shows the thematic structure of the whole clause as predicated Theme. Note that here the Subject is it. . .who persuaded him to continue (see Chapter 4, Section 4.7, p. 154, especially Figure 4-29).
Fig. 3-22 Thematic structure of clause with predicated Theme
A structure that can look superficially like Theme predication, but is not, is that involving postposition, where one nominal element of the clause — typically the Subject, though not always — is delayed to the end and the appropriate pronoun is inserted as a substitute in its original slot. This may be a nominal group, as in:
they don’t make sense, these instructions
shall I hang it above the door, your Chinese painting?
in some places they’ve become quite tame, the wombats
Here, the Theme is, as usual, the item(s) in first position:they, shall + I,in some places; while the postposed nominal functions as Afterthought, realized prosodically by a second, minor tonic with tone 3:
// 1 ^ they / don’t make / sensethese in// 3 structions//
Now, one common type of these clauses is that where the postposed Subject is an embedded ‘fact’ clause (see Chapter 5, Section 5.3, p. 197 and Chapter 7, Section 7.5.7, p. 470). Here, the pronoun substitute is alwaysit:
it helps a lot to be able to speak the language I don’t like it that you always look so tired
It was his teacher who persuaded him to continue
Theme Rheme Theme Rheme
Theme Rheme (a)
(b)
P r e d i c a t e d t h e m e s
So if the postposed fact clause is introduced by that, and the matrix clause has the verb beplus a nominal, the result may look like a predicated Theme; for example:
it was a mistake that the school was closed down it’s your good luck that nobody noticed
But these are not predicated Themes; the postposed Subject is not a relative clause, and there is no agnate form with the predication removed, proportional to it was his teacher who persuaded him to continue:his teacher persuaded him to continue. The last example is in fact ambiguous, and could be used to illustrate the difference:it’s your good luck (that) nobody noticed:
(i) predicated Theme: agnate to nobody noticed your good luck (ii) postposed Subject: agnate to
the fact that nobody noticed was your good luck
(Cf. Chapter 4, Section 4.7, p. 154.)