Global Journal of Human Social Science, G: Linguistics and Education, Volume 22 Issue 9

© 2022. Dr. Lai Yee Win. This research/ review article is distributed under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). You must give appropriate credit to authors and reference this article if parts of the article are reproduced in any manner. Applicable licensing terms are at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/ 4.0/. Construction of the THEME System of Myanmar By Dr. Lai Yee Win Sittwe University Abstract- The primary purpose of this paper is to construct the THEME system of Myanmar following the system network for THEME in English proposed by Halliday (1985, 1994; Halliday and Matthiessen 2004, 2014) within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics. It is found that the THEME system of Myanmar consists of two sub-systems: THEME STATUS and THEME COMPOSITION. For the former, there are two major types: unmarked and enhanced Themes, while for the latter, Themes can be presented in two ways: simple and multiple Themes. Unmarked Themes in Myanmar clauses are Subject, Complement, Adjunct, hypotactic clause, Predicator (only in imperative), and Ba-element (only in interrogative). The enhanced Theme in Myanmar contains two major types: thematic equatives and preposed attributes. A multiple Theme includes textual, interpersonal, and topical Themes, which can be chosen as a point of departure of the clause. The findings may shed light on the realization of the textual metafunction of the Myanmar language. Keywords: Theme, Systemic Functional Linguistics, Myanmar. GJHSS-G Classification: FOR Code: 200499 ConstructionoftheTHEMESystemofMyanmar Strictly as per the compliance and regulations of: Global Journal of HUMAN-SOCIAL SCIENCE: G Linguistics & Education Volume 22 Issue 9 Version 1.0 Year 2022 Type: Double Blind Peer Reviewed International Research Journal Publisher: Global Journals Online ISSN: 2249-460x & Print ISSN: 0975-587X