Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun See the extract.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun linguistics The part of a sentence that provides further information regarding the topic.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Greek rhēma, something that is said, word, subject of a speech (modeled on theme); see wer- in Indo-European roots.]

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Examples

  • I think he sees focus as a synonym of topic (rheme?), and not as a synonym of what you have to say about it.

    P is for Passive « An A-Z of ELT 2010

  • Again: rheme (by which Peirce meant a relation of arbitrary adicity or arity) was a first, proposition was a second, and argument was a third.

    Nobody Knows Nothing 2009

  • A technical explanation of two syntactic phenomena: word order and topic-prominent languages' systematic tools for effecting theme-rheme structures.

    Themes and rhemes and XSV: Smiled as the wonder I pondered 2008

  • Most languages can adopt theme-rheme structure idiosyncratically — as for English, we often use as for theme constructions — but topic-prominent languages use systematic changes in syntax or even dedicated morpological elements such as the Japanese clitic particle -wa to mark themes and to set them apart from rhemes.

    Themes and rhemes and XSV: Smiled as the wonder I pondered 2008

  • Independent of syntactic word order, theme-rheme or topic-comment sentence structure has the potential to affect the presentation of semantic elements in most languages.

    Archive 2008-02-01 2008

  • A technical explanation of two syntactic phenomena: word order and topic-prominent languages' systematic tools for effecting theme-rheme structures.

    Archive 2008-02-01 2008

  • Independent of syntactic word order, theme-rheme or topic-comment sentence structure has the potential to affect the presentation of semantic elements in most languages.

    Themes and rhemes and XSV: Smiled as the wonder I pondered 2008

  • Most languages can adopt theme-rheme structure idiosyncratically — as for English, we often use as for theme constructions — but topic-prominent languages use systematic changes in syntax or even dedicated morpological elements such as the Japanese clitic particle -wa to mark themes and to set them apart from rhemes.

    Archive 2008-02-01 2008

  • Further, just as we can think of a rheme as an unsaturated predicate, and a dicent as a proposition, we can think of the delome as an argument or rule of inference.

    Peirce's Theory of Signs Atkin, Albert 2006

  • And finally, since that sign will also determine an interpretant it can be classified as either a rheme, a dicent, or a delome.

    Peirce's Theory of Signs Atkin, Albert 2006

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