thematic-and-information-structure

name	thematic-and-information-structure
description	Diagnoses and reviews information flow — theme and rheme, given and new, markedness, and functional sentence perspective — matching each element's status by the target's own devices; owns clause-level information dynamics, not the surface cohesive ties that cohesion-and-texture owns. Use when a caller asks what should come first, or says the emphasis or word order feels wrong.
kind	skill
status	ready
provenance	{"principles":["P002","P003","P016","P024","P027","P028","P029","P030","P047","P048","P065","P066","P067","P086","P088","P089","P090"],"claims":["C00152","C00153","C00163","C00164","C00165","C00166","C00167","C00168","C00169","C00170","C00171","C00172","C00173","C00174","C00175","C00176","C00177","C00178","C00179","C00180","C00181","C00182","C00183","C00184","C00185","C00186","C00187","C00188","C00189","C00190","C00191","C00192","C00193","C00194","C00195","C00196","C00197","C00198","C00199","C00200","C00201","C00202","C00203","C00204","C00205","C00206","C00207","C00208","C00209","C00210","C00211","C00212","C00213","C00214","C00215","C00216","C00217","C00218","C00219","C00220","C00221","C00222","C00223","C00224","C00225","C00226","C00227","C00228","C00229","C00230","C00231","C00232"],"evidence":[],"source_anchors":[],"authored_from_digest":"57c272eec88e016d64b20e5f3f837f06d61d2b7e19abe998f5496e078f646bce"}

Thematic and Information Structure

Purpose

This skill reviews how a translation manages information flow: what each clause is about (theme), what it asserts (rheme), and what is treated as given versus new. Its rule is to preserve each element's information status using the target language's own signalling devices — matching markedness by function, not by transferring the source's word order.

When to use

• Given and new information must be signalled or sequenced in the target.
• A structure's markedness or information focus differs between source and target.
• Information flow must be analysed in a free-word-order or topic-prominent language.
• A participant or the thematic method of development must be traced across the text.

Procedure

1. Signal given and new with the device the target uses — definiteness, subordination, cleft or pseudo-cleft, punctuation — rather than transferring the source's, and order information given-before-new as the hearer-oriented default (P002, P029).
2. Know at least one functional-sentence-perspective model (communicative dynamism, theme–transition–rheme, context-dependence) because it explains free-word-order languages better than the Hallidayan positional account, whose limits you should recognise (P003, P066).
3. Analyse each clause as a theme (what it is about, in initial position) plus a rheme, and attend to the text's information dynamics (P047, P027).
4. Know the marked-theme devices and handle marked information focus and thematic markedness by the target's means, matching markedness by function, not form, and reading markedness as meaning (P016, P030, P024, P065).
5. Judge givenness by what the speaker assumes is in the addressee's consciousness, reading only the given/new status of a referenced participant (P067); the reference-tracking mechanics themselves — how anaphora and reference ties are reworked to target norms — belong to cohesion-and-texture, so route those there.
6. Maintain a discernible thematic method of development, preserving the source's thematic patterning where its elements sit naturally in target theme position and presenting a similar perspective where word order allows (P028, P088, P090).
7. Treat word order as significant beyond grammar, serving syntactic, semantic, and communicative functions at once, and draw on the strategies for resolving tension between syntax and information flow (P086, P089, P048).

Inputs

• The source and draft target clauses and their information structure.
• Which elements are given versus new, and which are marked.
• The word-order freedom of each language.

Output

Per finding: state each element's information status in source and draft, whether markedness was matched by function or copied by form, and the target-device correction that preserves the status; in compare mode weigh two information-structure devices by which matches markedness by function (P024). Follow the shared advise/review/compare response protocol in ../../references/translation-equivalence-key-concepts.md.

Anti-patterns to flag

• Transferring the source's given/new signalling device instead of the target's (P002).
• Copying source word order and losing or inventing markedness (P024, P030).
• Reading theme by initial position alone in a free-word-order language (P003, P066).

Worked example

Source fronts an object for emphasis ("This book, I read in a day"); a draft into a target with freer word order copies the fronting, which there reads as neutral and loses the emphasis. Diagnosis — markedness copied by form, not matched by function (P024, P030): read markedness as meaning and use the target's own device — a cleft, particle, or definiteness marker — to place the same information focus (P016, P002). In a free-word-order or topic-prominent target, do not read theme by initial position alone (P003, P066). Residual loss — the emphasis is carried by a different device with slightly different force; name it, and hand the wording back.

References

See ../../references/translation-equivalence-principles-index.md for the full principle catalogue grouped by skill, and ../../references/translation-equivalence-key-concepts.md for the equivalence vocabulary this skill uses.

Provenance

Derived from principles P002, P003, P016, P024, P027, P028, P029, P030, P047, P048, P065, P066, P067, P086, P088, P089, P090, grounded in the distillation-only sources (Baker, In Other Words; Nida, dynamic and formal equivalence). The frontmatter provenance block lists the exact principle and claim ids, which resolve into principles/principles.yaml and analysis/claims.jsonl.