Periodicity: Thematic Progression Patterns

In recent years there have been a number of attempts to establish the relation between Themes and genres. The notion of Theme was first introduced by Prague School and later was integrated by Halliday into his systemic functional model. Though there is considerable agreement among linguists that Theme plays a major role in the organization of the message and in enabling the message to be communicated effectively, this notion has nevertheless given rise to a lot of controversy both in and outside the systemic circle. Central to the controversy is the question of how to delimit the notion of Theme.