of the predicative meaning of the sentence can be seen, for instance, in the course of English grammar by M. A. Ganshina and N. M. Vasilevskaya, who write: "Every sentence shows the relation of the statement to reality from the point of view of the speaker" [Ganshina, Vasilevskaya, 321]. p align="justify"> Now, it is easily noticed that the cited and similar definitions of predication do not explicitly distinguish the two cardinal sides of the sentence content, namely, the nominative side and the predicative side. We may quite plausibly suppose that the non-discrimination of these two sides of sentence meaning gave the ultimate cause to some scholars for their negative attitude towards the notion of predication as the fundamental factor of sentence forming.
Taking into consideration the two-aspective character of the sentence as a signemic unit of language, predication should now be interpreted not simply as referring the content of the sentence to reality, but as referring the nominative content of the sentence to reality. It is this interpretation of the semantic-functional nature of predication that discloses, in one and the same generalised presentation, both the unity of the two identified aspects of the sentence, and also their different, though mutually complementary meaningful roles. p align="justify"> XXII. ACTUAL DIVISION OF THE SENTENCE
notional parts of the sentence referring to the basic elements of the reflected situation form, taken together, the nominative meaning of the sentence. For the sake of terminological consistency, the division of the sentence into notional parts can be just so called - the "nominative division" (its existing names are the "grammatical division" and the "syntactic division"). The discrimination of the nominative division of the sentence is traditional; it is this type of division that can conveniently be shown by a syntagmatic model, in particular, by a model of immediate constituents based on the traditional syntactic analysis (see Ch. XXIV).
Alongside of the nominative division of the sentence, the idea of ​​the so-called "actual division" of the sentence has been put forward in theoretical linguistics. The purpose of the actual division of the sentence, called also the "functional sentence perspective", is to reveal the correlative significance of the sentence parts from the point of view of their actual informative role in an utterance, ie from the point of view of the immediate semantic contribution they make to the total information conveyed by the sentence in the context of connected speech. In other words, the actual division of the sentence in fact exposes its informative perspective. p align="justify"> The main components of the actual division of the sentence are the theme and the rheme. The theme expresses the starting point of the communication, ie it denotes an object or a phenomenon about which something is reported. The rheme expresses the basic informative part of the communication, its contextually relevant centre. Between the theme and the rheme are positioned intermediary, transitional parts of the actual division of various degrees of informative value (these parts are sometimes called "transition"). p align="justify"> The theme of the actual division of the sentence may or may not coincide with the subject of the sentence. The rheme of the actual division, in its turn, may or may not coincide with the predicate of the sentence - either with the whole predicate group or its part, such as the predicative, the object, the adverbial. p align="justify"> Thus, in the following sentences of various emotional character the theme is expressed by the subject, while the rheme is expressed by the predicate:
Max bounded forward. Again Charlie is being too clever! Her advice can't be of any help to us. p align="justify"> In the first of the above sentences the rheme coincides with the whole predicate group. In the second sentence the adverbial introducer again can be characterised as a transitional element, ie an element informationally intermediary between the theme and the rheme, the latter being expressed by the rest of the predicate group, The main part of the rheme - the "peak" of informative perspective - is rendered in this sentence by the intensified predicative too clever. In the third sentence the addressee object to us is more or less transitional, while the informative peak, as in the previous example, is expressed by the predicative of any help. p align="justify"> In the following sentences the correlation between the nominative and actual divisions is the reverse: the theme is expressed by the predicate or its part, while the rheme is rendered by the subject:
Through the open window came the purr of an approaching motor car. Who is coming late but John! There is a difference of opinion...
