Phasal dynamism and the unfolding of meaning as text

Abstract

In this paper I explore the etic category of textuality and the emic category of Theme arguing that while Theme in English may simultaneously signal the point of departure of a clause with respect to the preceding text and also the ‘aboutness’ of the clause in relation to the method of development of a text, this is not necessarily the case with other languages. In particular I consider the rich textual resources of Scottish Gaelic, a verb-initial language with no morphological marking for Theme, to problematise standard treatments of thematicity in languages other than English. I elaborate on Cloran’s (2010) account of Rhetorical Units to present as a hypothesis for further exploration the idea that, while Gaelic and English ground clauses in both space and time, Gaelic is a process-centred language while English is a Subject-centred language and that these differences in the respective characterology of the two languages have repercussions on the process of textualisation and the method of development in each language.