A Comparison of Subject and Theme in Syntactic Analysis

The traditional grammar makes a syntactic analysis of a sentence by locating its members of speech such as subject and predicate. This approach only stays on the surface level of syntactic structure, without revealing the relationship between a particular language form and its function. The systemic-functional grammar proclaims a theoretical and reasonable analysis of Theme and Rheme in a clause from its perspective of textual function. This paper, by way of distinguishing the difference between subject and theme, aims at expounding the significance of theme in revealing the clause as an exchange. It also tries to demonstrate the practical application of theme in discourse analysis with an exemplification.