Rhematic

Within a non-theme, transitionals cede to rhematics, the transition itself being lowest on the CD scale.

The object of rhetoric is persuasion,—of logic, conviction,—of grammar, significancy. A fourth term is wanting, the rhematic, or logic of sentences.

He [Coleridge] establishes an opposition between Σύνταξις ῥημάτων or ῥηματική ("rhematic"), the art of joining words into sentences, and γραμματική ("grammar"), which in its derivation from γράμμα (a letter, written character) is the art of joining letters together, spelling. Or, cf CN IV 4771: "Grammar [is] the scheme & instrument of connecting words significantly, the Meta-grammatic <rhematic>, the Doctrine of arranging words perspicuously" […]

Rhematic relations are, in a sense, 'intermediate syntactic meanings'. To avoid a proliferation of types of intermediate meanings I do not extend the concept of intermediate syntactic meaning to cover rhematic relations.

In addition, if imitation and recycling tend to turn thematic titles into rhematic ones as I have shown for Situations, the use of sequels and continuations cannot avoid doing so. The title Le Menteur [The Liar: [Pierre] Corneille] was perfectly thematic; in La Suite du Menteur [Sequel to The Liar: Corneille], which is rhematic (this play is the sequel ...), Le Menteur itself becomes rhematic (this play is the sequel to the play entitled ...).

Given that rhematic subjects are more common in Czech than in English […], the degree of syntactic constancy among rhematic subjects may be supposed to be lower than among subjects counted without respect to their FSP [functional sentence perspective] role. To test this assumption, I collected 50 rhematic subjects from each original of Čermáková's sources and examined their syntactic counterparts in the other language.

The terms "theme" and "rheme" are both derived from Greek, and are parallel to each other. The term "theme" comes from the Greek root the- "to set", or "establish", and means "that which is set or established". The term "rheme" is derived from the root rhe- "to say", or "tell", and means "that which is said or told" (about that which was set or established beforehand). These terms are also convenient because adjectives are easily derived from them: "thematic" and "rhematic", respectively. The etymology of the terms presupposes that the thematic part of the sentence contains the topic, while the rhematic part conveys new information about the topic.

Rhematic Indexical Sinsign: As an object of raw experience, a burst of unplanned hollering is a rhematic indexical sinsign: it directs attention to the object which caused the presence of the sign […].

[Charles Sanders] Peirce argues that common and proper nouns function typically as indices, whereas verbs and adjectives are typically icons and rhemes (MS 516:39). The noun camel is a rhematic index when it is interpreted and thus connected with real-life experience. The adjective green is a rhematic icon open to many interpretations because it says nothing about any object to which this color should be attributed.

rhematic adjectives

Passive rhematic adjectives ending in -able […]

Emotion may sometimes cause the speaker to adopt a marked sequence, and the rhematic adjective will then appear in sentence-initial position.

Since in many languages adverbs do not have a fixed place in the word order, questions can be used to isolate the unmarked position of rhematic adverbs. […] There are facets of contrastive NPs [noun phrases] which are both "old" or thematic information and "new" or rhematic information. Consider the use of contrastive constructions to repair texts. In such cases the contrastive NP represents rhematic information in that it adds information to the text which corrects the hearer's error.

In terms of its phrasal environment, adjective intensification seems to occur most 'naturally' in predicative position. By modifying an independent, rhematic adjective, the intensifiers seem to perform their function in the most efficient way.