FUNCTIONAL SENTENCE PERSPECTIVE & COMMUNICATIVE DYNAMISM

Abstract

Functional Sentence Perspective and Communicative Dynamism are two significant concepts in the functional theory of modern linguistics. The theory of FSP was first developed by Velim Mathesius who gave the ‘order of ideas’ the name of FSP or theme/rheme structure and dubbed what comes first in the sentence the starting point, point of departure, theme or topic; and the idea that follows it the nucleus, rheme, comment, focus, i.e. The essence of this conception is that every act of communication is structured in two different ways: the grammatical pattern of the sentence, and the information-bearing structure of the utterance. In English, the theme—rheme sequence is the normal, unmarked word order while the rheme—theme sequence is the marked word order. Communicative Dynamism is viewed as a process of gradually unfolding meaning, each part of the utterance contributing dynamically to the total communicative effect. These concepts, however, have not received due attention, as the correspondence holding between the order of words and the order of ideas and the role of context in the sentence/utterance and sentence/discourse distinctions are still not fully clarified.