D. V. Demidov

parts of actual division neither purely thematic, nor rhematic; they 
can be treated as a secondary rheme, the ―subrhematic‖ part of a 
sentence; this part is called ―a transition‖ For example: Again 
Charlie is late. – Again (transition) Charlie (theme) is late 
(rheme). The rheme is the obligatory informative component of a 
sentence, there may be sentences which include only the rheme; 
the theme and the transition are optional.
The theory of actual division of the sentence is connected 
with the logical analysis of the proposition. The logical subject 
and the logical predicate, like the theme and the rheme, may or 
may not coincide, respectively, with the subject and the predicate 
of the sentence. When the actual division of the sentence reflects 
the natural flow of thinking directed from the starting point of 
communication to its semantic core, from the logical subject to the 
logical predicate, the theme precedes the rheme and this type of 
actual division is called ―direct ‖, ―unspecialized‖, or ―unmarked‖. 
In English, with its fixed word order, direct actual division means 
that the theme coincides with the subject in the syntactic structure 
of the sentence, while the rheme co incides with the predicate, as 
in Charlie (theme) is late (rheme). In some sentences, the rheme 
may be expressed by the subject and it may precede the theme, 
which is expressed by the predicate, e.g.: Who is late today? – 
Charlie (rheme) is late (theme). This type of actual division is 
called ―inverted‖, ―reverse‖, ―specialized‖, or ―marked‖. The last 

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example shows that actual division of the sentence finds its full 
expression only in a concrete context of speech (it is sometimes 
referred to as the ―contextual‖ division of the sentence).
As has been mentioned, actual division of the sentence 
finds its full expression only in a concrete context of speech, but 
this does not mean that the context should be treated as the factor 
which makes the speaker arrange the informative perspective of 
the sentence in a particular way. On the contrary, the actual 
division is an active means of expressing functional meanings and 
it is not so much context-governed as it is context-governing: it 
builds up concrete contexts out of constructional sentence models 
chosen to reflect different situations and events.