ABSTRACT
Mathesius's proposal to analyze sentences into two parts – theme and rheme – from the perspective of information transmission is of universal significance. The component preceding the modal particle is essentially the starting point of the sentential message, so from the expression point of view, the word order in spoken Chinese sentences is for the theme to precede the rheme in principle. Theme postpositioning is above all a phenomenon particular to the dialogic style. Adverbs are used to delimit the semantic aspects of the rheme, such as degree, manner, scope, tense-aspect, etc. When they occur before the verb, they help determine the tone of statement; when they appear in a sentence finally, they supplement the sentence meaning. If a sentence involving translocation is examined in a dynamic process, it can be regarded as a transition from the canonical sentence to the elliptical sentence.
