Theme in English and German

Abstract

This book represents a detailed discussion and corpus analysis of Theme in English and German originals and translations. The empirical results are based on thousands of clauses from four different registers, cover a variety of linguistic aspects including multiple Themes, marked Themes, participant roles, agency, and identifiability, and are tested statistically using regression analyses. The book sheds light on one of the most elusive concepts of the systemic functional linguistics framework, Theme, by comparing it with different approaches, related concepts, and realizations in different languages and by examining empirically different Theme models, contrastive differences, and translation effects. Given that Theme in English and German is realized formally by being the first clause constituent and is thus, effectively, a syntactic phenomenon, this monograph is not only relevant for functional linguists, but any interested in English and German word order differences and their effects on translations.