Abstract

The current study discusses the metafunctional diversity of nominalized thematic structures in Achebe’s (1958) English novel, Things Fall Apart and in its Urdu translation, Bikharti Duniya (Ullah, 1991). For statistical measurement, O'Donnell’s (2008) scheme of the UAM Corpus tool has been used to annotate the selected corpus. After annotation, some nominalized themes in English and Urdu have been screened to interpret their grammatical realization, functional significance, thematic progression (McCabe, 1999) and unmotivated displacements of nominalized themes. The results show that the grammatical realization of nominalized themes in English and Urdu varies due to the verbs marked with gender and numbers. Additionally, the English and the Urdu nominalized themes go parallel in theme markedness but the difference is observed when the thematic information units become rhematic information units.

Key Words

Nominalization, Theme, Rheme, Corpus, English, Urdu

Introduction

This research focuses on the textual metafunction and its lexico-grammatical parameters to figure out the nominalized thematic structures with thematic progression. Thematic structures, with the help of their line of meanings, organize the message of a clause. The thematic structure of a clause consists of two distinct parts i.e. theme and rheme, which constitute the message. To constitute the message, the position of the theme is indicated as clause initial. The element of theme decides the upcoming message. It is chosen by the speaker as a point of departure in order to make the hearer interpret the information confined in the message. The element of rheme accompanied by theme is termed as remainder which completes the structure and information of the clause. In this way, the present work intends to investigate the theme-rheme sequence in the thematic structures of English and Urdu clauses by determining the aspects of nominalization. In this study, the thematic progression of the nominalized themes in English and Urdu has also been investigated to determine a particular flow of information.

Many kinds of research including contrastive analysis of languages, have been conducted by applying the theory of SFL. The metafunctions of English in comparison with other languages have been investigated in a number of studies on translation (Steiner, 2002; Kunz et al., 2014). The lack of investigation regarding textual metafunction in English and Urdu causes a research gap, so in order to fill this research gap, the existing study encompasses the parameters of textual metafunction and especially the nominalized themes in English and Urdu.

This research aims to identify the English and Urdu nominalized themes according to the parameters proposed by Halliday (1985). It also aims to check out the difference in frequency of nominalized thematic structures by tagging English and Urdu corpus. The major aim of this study is to locate the grammatical realizations, functional significance and thematic progression of the nominalized themes. Based on the objectives, this study is carried out with three research questions.

1- What is the grammatical realization of the nominalized themes in English and Urdu?

2- What are the functional significance and thematic progression of nominalized themes in English and Urdu?

3- How effectively have the nominalized themes in English been translated into Urdu?

This study will help the writers compose literary texts according to their contextual specifications. The current study will raise awareness of ESL and EFL teachers, instructional designers and researchers to provide learners and writers with effective academic writing instructions regarding the use of nominalized thematic structures.

Literature Review

Nominalization

Nominalization is termed a grammatical metaphor (Halliday & Martin, 1993). A kind of density is found in nominalization-oriented texts and discourses because the information is compacted and it becomes hard to process due to nominalization. Nominalization performs certain functions. Firstly, the verb is likely to be converted into a noun. In the other function, subject or object positions in an equative sentence are occupied by nominalization restricting the process of source verbs.

Nominalization is also discussed as part of lexicogrammatical realizations. Nominalization is reflected by a thematic structure having two or more separate elements. The elements are liable to form a constituent as a theme. This kind of theme is called a nominalized theme due to the combination of a nominal group and its complement. The combination of the nominal group and its complement is determined by relative pronouns: what, who, that, whose and whom. The clause containing nominalized theme is interpreted as ‘thematic equative’ (Halliday, 1967) because of theme and rheme share equality in this clause. Such a clause is known as identifying clause. Thematic equative permits theme and rheme structures to set up an equation. In nominalization, thematic equative structures possess equal identity, so theme and rheme can be placed in reverse order. Furthermore, two semantic features as two senses of the word identity are realized by thematic equative (Halliday, 1985). A thematic source grouping two or more constituents of the theme and rheme structure are called thematic equative. The following table describes the thematic equative.




 

Table 1. Thematic Equative as Theme and Rheme

Nominalization as Theme
What no one seemed to notice	was	The writing on the wall
Theme	Rheme
Nominalization as Rheme
Twopence a day	was	what my master allowed me
Theme	Rheme




In thematic equative, two constituents are linked by a relationship of identity that is expressed by a form of the verb be. The nominalized structure is a nominal group comprising a head and a post modifying relative clause. The head and post limiting relative clauses are joined by relative pronouns: what, that, who, whose and whom etc. In fact, thematic equative permits the head and its relative clause to design nominalized thematic structures. Moreover, thematic equatives are of two types: unmarked thematic equative and marked thematic equative. An unmarked thematic equative allows nominalization in the theme and the nominalized theme functions as the subject of the clause. The marked thematic equative also allows nominalization in theme but such sort of nominalized theme functions as an adjunct of the clause. Both types of thematic equatives have semantic features of exclusiveness through which unmarked and marked nominalized themes extend their meanings to establish their combination with rheme. The subsequent table displays the projection of unmarked and marked nominalized themes in italics.




 

Table 2. Marked and Unmarked Nominalized Themes

Theme	Function	Class	Example
Unmarked	Subject	Nominalized clause as head	What I desire is a good pair of shoes.
Marked	Adjunct, Complement	Nominalized clause as head	What I desire, I will purchase soon.




Moreover, nominalization in thematic equative can be considered either as a theme or as a rheme. The present study has been carried out by focusing on the aspect of thematic equatives in nominalization.

 

Previous Studies

There are studies including contrastive analysis of the metafunctions of different languages. As Rose (2001) analyzed languages including Chinese, French, Gaelic, German, Japanese, Pitjantjatjara, Tagalog and Vietnamese to investigate variations in their themes. He selected akin corpus from the profiles of the grammars of these languages (Caffarel et al., 2004). Textual resources of the languages were focused on for the research. The researcher concluded that the languages contain diverse textual organizations due to variations in social contexts. The thematic structures of Spanish and English were investigated by McCabe (1999). In addition, for the thematic analysis in translation, a study applying theme-rheme sequence to the translation between Korean and English was conducted by Kim (2007). Her study hypothesized that there was still a gap between translation studies and SFL, especially in the application of thematic analysis. She analyzed the translation between English and Korean, focusing on two things: (1) major difficulties in the application of SFL-based theme analysis and (1) the ways in which they had been addressed (Kim, 2007a, 2011a, 2011b). Her study concluded with some suggestions for the combined research regarding SFL and translation studies.

Another contrastive study was conducted by Lavid et al. (2010) to contrast the grammar of Spanish and English. The findings revealed that Spanish nominal groups diverge from their English counterparts in three main areas: (1) the realization of the Thing as a pronoun, (2) the functional distribution of Deictics, and (3) the logical structure of the constituents. Furthermore, the grammatical properties of thematic equatives and nominalization in terms of their themes in news reports and editorials have also been investigated (Francis, 1990). With reference to these studies, the current study involves the analysis of nominalized thematic structures and their thematic progression, for which the methodology has been defined in the following section.

 

Research Methodology

To accomplish this piece of research, the mixed methods approach has been used. Firstly, the quantitative analysis determines the differences in frequency in the English and the Urdu texts, and secondly, the qualitative analysis describes all the differences in greater detail. The parameters of systemic functional linguistics (Halliday, 1994) and the patterns of thematic progression (McCabe, 1999) have been applied as a theoretical framework.

 

Samples

The samples of the present study were selected from electronic sources by defining purposive sampling criteria. Achebe’s (1958) novel, Things Fall Apart and its Urdu translation, Bikharti Duniya (Ullah, 1991), were selected to compile English and Urdu corpus.

 

Corpus Size

Due to semi-automatic annotation, the size of the corpus was small. The two texts, including almost 50,000 words each, have limited the size of the corpus. The two corpora containing almost 100,000 words were open-ended because the new annotation schemes were incorporated into existing ones at different points.

 

Annotation of the Corpus

The annotation of the data in English and Urdu Corpus (EUC) was done by UAM Corpus Tool (O’Donnell, 2008) semi-automatically and manually. The UAMCT allows the researchers to make additions and to design their own schemes applying the tags either in a similar way or a different way. This corpus tool was selected due to the unavailability of a fully automatic tool to identify SFG features, especially in the Urdu corpus. The developed corpus was processed in the UAM corpus tool for the annotation regarding nominalized thematic structures. The following annotation scheme was imported from UAMCT for annotation purposes.

Figure 1

The scheme of the UAM Corpus Tool



Data Analysis and Procedure

The annotated English and Urdu corpus were used to collect the data. The classification of nominalized themes presented by Halliday (1994) was incorporated. For Urdu grammatical structure, the descriptions given by Schmidt (1999) were incorporated. Some clauses were chosen to analyze the functional significance and thematic progression for which the sequence of theme-as-given and rheme-as-new or vice versa was adopted. The figures were designed to show the flow of information units. The translation of some Urdu clauses in comparison with English clauses was investigated and the frequency of the English and the Urdu nominalized themes were mentioned in the tables.

Results and Discussion

Grammatical Realization of Nominalized Themes in English and Urdu

Generally, in English, a nominalized thematic structure consists of a noun or a nominal phrase followed by a modifying relative clause and further, it is a thematic equative that promotes the sense of exclusiveness and identification. Likewise, in Urdu, a nominalized thematic structure is also a thematic equative promoting the sense of exclusiveness and identification but its syntactic structure is different because of grammatical gender and free-word order (Butt & King, 2007) in Urdu. In Urdu, the nominalized theme markedness also follows the parameters presented by Halliday (1994). To carry the discussion forward, the following nominalized thematic structures from English and Urdu corpus have been screened. Consider the first example to show the difference in theme markedness.

a. ? mæn hu? k?m?ts ?t w?l n?t bi b?r?d ba? h?z klænzm?n.

b. x?d?k??i k?rne v?le ki t??d?fin me? ?ske q?bile v?le ??s? n?hi let?e.

The English clause in (1a) has an unmarked nominalized theme including a nominalization marker who and a finite verb, whereas the Urdu clause in (1b) has an adjunct as a marked nominalized theme including covert nominalization and a non-finite verb. The marked nominalized themes including covert nominalization and non-finite verbs, are also created in English. As the unmarked nominalized theme, a man who commits it can be converted into the marked nominalized theme e.g. a man committing suicide in which the nominalization marker seems covert but the noun performing an action is always visible. But the marked nominalized theme x?d?k??i k?rne v?le ki t??d?fin me? (*in the burial of committing suicide) does not contain a visible noun performing an action but this theme contains a clitic or an oblique-infinitive maker v?l? which is known as the agent of an action (Schmidt, 1999). This clitic is used with the verbal nouns (non-finite verbs) in Urdu because it is marked with gender and number. Due to the presence of this clitic, the nouns and nominal phrases can be omitted from the marked nominalized themes in Urdu because of the various forms of this clitic e.g. v?l? (Singular + Masculine), v?le (Singular/Plural + Masculine), v?li (Singular + Feminine), v?lij?? (Plural + Feminine) seem nominal markers as well. So, it is evident that the clitics or oblique-infinitive markers also contribute to the theme markedness of nominalized themes in Urdu. This formation is not common in English. The forthcoming examples discuss the correlative construction in the Urdu nominalized themes.

a. ð? ???z evri mæn l??nd w?z ð? læ??w?d? ?v ð? h?l??d a?t w?dn? ?nstr?m?nt.

b. vo ?iz? ?o q?bile k? h?r ??xs sikht?? t?h? ?n me? se ek l?k?i ke ?s ?le ki z?b?n s?m??hn? t?h?.

These clauses differentiate correlative construction between English and Urdu nominalized themes. In English, correlatives are used as coordinating and subordinating conjunctions. The English nominalized themes do not include specific correlatives but some similar constructions seem possible. On the contrary, Urdu accommodates a unique correlative construction vo-?o (that-which) opposite to the correlative conjunction ?o-vo (which-that) (Butt & King, 2007; Schmidt, 1999). This correlative construction is usually used to create embedded and extraposed clauses in Urdu. The Urdu nominalized theme (embedded clause) in (2b) begins with the demonstrative vo which correlates with the relative ?o and an NP-modifying clause. The English nominalized theme in (2a) shows an unmarked thematic prominence without incorporating any demonstrative at the clause-initial position. The next clauses exhibit the usage of nominalization markers in English and Urdu nominalized themes.

a. ?nd p?hæps ð??z n?t s?? j?? w?d bi ple??? ?n pe?z

 ?n les ??p?n ple?s?z.

b. ??r ??l?b?n vo b??e ?o ?b ?t?ne ?hote n?hi r?he t?he ?o?? ?o?? b?n k?r ?n    ??ghõ m? ?o k?m kh?li hot??? khelt?e.

These clauses illustrate that the nominalization marker following a noun or a nominal phrase can be used both overtly and covertly in English. As the English nominalized thematic structure in (3a) starts with a nominal phrase modified by a covert nominalization marker and an NP-modifying clause. In this structure, not only nominalization marker who but also finite verb seemed covert but the sense of thematic nominalization can be observed clearly. And due to thematic nominalization, the equation of this structure is also possible e.g. In less open places, there would be playing those who were not so young. The same is not true for the Urdu nominalized theme because the nominalization markers and finite verbs are always used overtly. As the Urdu nominalized thematic structure in (3b) includes a visible nominalization marker ?o (who) and a finite verb t?he (were). In this way, nominalized structures are created differently in English and Urdu.

Functional Significance of Nominalized Themes

The nominalized thematic structures of English and Urdu resemble each other with regard to their functional significance; and flow of information. Generally, a thematic structure generates a message occupying a theme as clause-initial elements which obtain given information and a rheme as the remaining elements which involve new information but on the contrary, the opposite information sequence is also possible (Halliday, 1994). The same is true for the nominalized themes in English and Urdu as well. Although the clauses of thematic nominalization are constructed in multiple ways, they go parallel in creating coherence in any message. The significance of thematic nominalization in English and Urdu is twofold: (1) it makes the theme an exclusive element or an identifying theme and (2) it makes the whole clause an equation in which the theme and the rheme can interchange their position and information. The interchange of theme and rheme causes to shift nominalization in the rheme. The following discussion figures out the thematic progression patterns.




 

Table 3. Thematic Progression of Nominalized Themes in English

Thematic Structures	Thematic Progression				Peripheral Theme
	Linear Theme	Constant Theme	Split Theme	Split Rheme
Unmarked Nominalized Theme	8%	32%	0%	0%	74%
Marked Nominalized Theme	2%	3%	0%	0%	10%
Overall Frequency	10%	35%	0%	0%	84%




The table shows that in nominalized thematic structures, the unmarked themes bear 32% while the marked themes carry only 3% constant thematic progression. This difference in frequency manifests that firstly, unmarked nominalized thematic structures are more frequent than marked nominalized thematic structures in English text and secondly, unmarked nominalized themes link the flow of information with their preceding themes more constantly than marked nominalized themes in English. The maximum 74% of unmarked nominalized themes and the minimum 10% of marked nominalized themes are placed as peripheral themes which do not share the flow of information with their preceding themes and carry new information necessarily. In the end, it is obvious that the English nominalized themes, both unmarked and marked, are observed at the peripheral position with 84% frequency which is more than the frequency of 35% of constant themes and the frequency of 10% of linear themes.




 

Table 4. Thematic Progression of Nominalized Themes in Urdu



The table gives the description that the unmarked and marked nominalized themes in Urdu are mostly placed at the peripheral position with the highest frequency of 75%. In nominalized thematic structures, the unmarked nominalized themes appear more frequently at the periphery than the marked nominalized themes because the Urdu text is composed of new information units more than given information units. But the Urdu text, despite having 75% new information units, is not equal to the English text having 84% frequency of new information units. The given information units of constant thematic progression in unmarked and marked nominalized themes appear in the Urdu text with almost similar frequency. The same is true for the given information units of linear thematic progression. Analyzing the patterns of thematic progression in unmarked and marked nominalized thematic structures, it comes with clarity that nominalized themes maintain mostly the flow of new information in the Urdu text because the new information patterns are more helpful for exclusiveness and identification of thematic nominalization. In this section, the nominalization and information flow only in the theme have been discussed in detail. The thematic progression has been displayed in the following figures. 

Thematic Structures	Thematic Progression				Peripheral Theme
	Linear Theme	Constant Theme	Split Theme	Split Rheme
Unmarked Nominalized Theme	6%	10%	0%	0%	43%
Marked Nominalized Theme	5%	13%	0%	0%	32%
Overall Frequency	11%	23%	0%	0%	75%

Figure 2

TP Patterns of Nominalized Thematic Structure-1

These clauses point out the function of thematic nominalization in English and Urdu. The English clauses (4) and the Urdu clauses (5) secure thematic nominalization because of the placement of an embedded clause into the matrix clause which ultimately turns out to be a thematic equative. Actually, the message has been encoded with thematic nominalization to make the information exclusive which means this and this only and nothing else. The encoder creates the structures of thematic nominalization to identify and specify particular thematic information which equates with rhematic information. The nominalized thematic information units have an interpersonal association and are unmarked in both English and Urdu clauses because they are placed as subjects. Additionally, the flow of information is examined by applying the patterns of thematic progression. The nominalized themes seem to carry give and new information. Due to the presence of interpersonal pronominal marker, the information has been projected by constant thematic progression in the nominalized theme. Besides, due to the presence of the rest of the elements, the new information is also projected by a peripheral theme. The rhemes of both English and Urdu clauses carry new information. In this figure, the T1 is repeated as a constant theme in T2 but T2 also has new information at the periphery. The R1 does not share its information with the following theme and rheme. The next thematic structures show different theme markedness and information flow as compared to the previous thematic structures. The nominalized theme is located at the periphery but the pronominal element of the nominalized theme links its information with the preceding theme bearing constant thematic progression. Here, the thematic progression sequence is considered to be twofold. The subsequent nominalized thematic structures furnish a different way of thematic progression patterns. The following figure shows a different thematic progression of the nominalized thematic structures.

Figure 3

TP Pattern of Nominalized Thematic Structure-2



These thematic structures confirm the placement of nominalized themes after textual themes in English and Urdu. The nominalized theme in the English clause is a marked theme because it is placed as an adjunct associated with its matrix clause as the rheme. Despite being an adjunct, the sense of thematic nominalization makes the whole clause a thematic equative. And in this thematic equative, the exclusive information is about only that young man whose father had no yams. The same is observed in the Urdu clause. The flow of information is also parallel to the nominalized thematic structures of English and Urdu. The nominalized theme seems to be placed at the periphery because it contains new information. This nominalized theme does not share its information with any of the preceding themes and rhemes. Taking into account these examples, it is evident that the functional significance particular to the thematic progression of nominalized thematic structures is identical in English and Urdu. The next segment confers the analysis of nominalized thematic structures in English and Urdu.

 

Problems in Translation of English Nominalized Themes into Urdu

In this section, the analysis of English and Urdu nominalized thematic structures: ideational, interpersonal, and textual has been presented. In ideational thematic structures, the themes of declarative clauses are nominalized. In interpersonal thematic structures, the themes of declarative, interrogative, exclamatory and optative clauses are nominalized. And in textual thematic structures, themes of all types of clauses are nominalized after conjunction, conjunctive adjuncts and continuatives. Moreover, nominalized thematic structures are categorized as unmarked nominalized themes and marked nominalized themes. The former are used as subjects of a clause whereas the latter are considered to be objects of a clause. Following this sequence, the annotation of English and Urdu nominalized thematic structures have been analyzed and their frequency of occurrence is counted in the succeeding table.




 

 

 

Table 5. Nominalized Themes and Nominal Markers in English and Urdu

Thematic Structures	English Nominalization Markers		Urdu Nominalization Markers
Unmarked Nominalized Themes	Who	66%	?o / ??s / ??n / ??nh?	18%
	What	8%	?o / ?o k??h	1%
	Whose	7%	??s k? / ??s ke / ??s ki	6%
	When	1%	??b	17%
	Where	1%	??h??	11%
	Whom	4%	??s ko / ??n ko	1%
	That	15%	?o / ??s / ??n	10%
	Which	12%
Marked Nominalized Themes	Who	2%	?o / ??s / ??n	12%
	What	1%	?o / ?o k??h	12%
	Whose	1%	??s k? / ??s ke / ??s ki	3%
	When	3%	??b	4%
	Where	0%	??h??	3%
	Whom	0%	??s ko / ??nh?	1%
	That	1%	?o / ??s / ??n	13%
	Which	3%




Observing nominalized themes, the difference in frequency figures out that nominalized unmarked themes are more frequent in English than in Urdu, while nominalized marked themes are frequent in Urdu. The frequency of the very first nominalization marker is 66%, while its Urdu equivalents appear with the lowest frequency of 13%. This difference is due to two reasons. Firstly, the English nominalization marker appears in only unmarked thematic structures, while its Urdu equivalents appear not only in unmarked but also in marked thematic structures. Secondly, during translation, most of the nominalized themes in English have been shifted into the rhemes in Urdu. This is also true to the next nominalization marker that occurs with the 8% frequency in unmarked English themes. On the other hand, its equivalents ?o and ?o k??h appear with 12% frequency in Urdu marked themes. The frequency of the nominalization marker when is less in English unmarked and marked themes than the frequency of its equivalent ??b in Urdu unmarked and marked themes because the marker when is mostly used as subordinating conjunction in English while the maker ??b seems to be a nominalization marker which creates a complement clause for the preceding nouns in Urdu. Furthermore, in Urdu, not only when but also as has been translated as ??b in the initial clause of nominalization so, the Urdu contains a higher frequency of nominalized themes than English. The next nominalization marker where is also used as subordinating conjunctions in English, mostly so; it is less frequent in English. The marker ??h?? also creates a complement clause for its preceding nouns and in this way, it appears with 11% and 3% frequency in Urdu unmarked and marked themes, respectively. The next nominalization marker is more frequent in English because many English nominalized themes have been translated as Urdu rhemes. The same is true for the next nominalization markers which and that which appear with 12% and 15% frequency. On the other hand, their three Urdu equivalents, ?o, ??s and ??n, occur with the lowest frequency of 10% due to the appearance of mostly nominalization markers in rhemes. Another reason is that many unmarked nominalized themes in English have been translated as marked nominalized themes in Urdu. In this reference, the frequency of 13% of Urdu nominalization markers ?o, ??s and ??n in marked thematic structures becomes a proof.

In the next section, only finite nominalized thematic structures have been selected from the English and Urdu corpus. Some other clauses preceding nominalized thematic structures have also been taken to check the flow of information among them. The whole analysis reveals that English nominalized themes have been translated as simple prepositional phrases, nouns and nominal phrases etc. In this way, the translated Urdu themes lose the sense of nominalization and become topically unmarked and marked themes. During translation, unmarked nominalized themes in English have been placed as rhemes in Urdu and vice versa. Due to unmotivated displacement of themes, translation choices seem ambiguous and convey misleading information as the following clauses indicate the conversion of an unmarked nominalized theme into a simple topical theme.




 

Table 6. Conversion of Unmarked Nominalized Theme into Topical Theme

English Source Text
CL	Theme			Rheme
	Nominalized/Topical
1.1a	Okonkwo			w?z s?t?? ?n ? ???tsk?n ??lredi i:t?? h?z f?:st wa?fs mi?l.
1.2a	Obiageli, hu? h?d br??t ?t fr?m h? m?ð?z h?t,			sæt ?n ð? fl?: we?t?? f?r h?m tu f?n??.
Urdu Target Text
CL	Theme			Rheme
	Textual	Adjunct	Topical
1.1b			Okonkwo	b?kri ki kh?l p?r beth? b??i bivi ke gh?r se ?j? kh?n? kh? r?h? t?h?.
1.2b			Obiageli	?pni m?? ki ?honp??i se kh?n? l?i t?hi
1.3b	??r	?b	---	f?r? p?r bet?hi ?ske x?t??m k?rne k? ?nt?ez?r k?r r?hi t?hi.




The analysis describes that the first clause in (1.1a) begins with a subject as unmarked topical theme carrying given information which is associated with the rheme carrying new information. The translated clause in (1.1b) shows a similar division of theme and rheme as in (1.1a). But the next nominalized clause in (1.2a) is not translated as a nominalized clause in (1.2b). The nominalized theme Obiageli, hu? h?d br??t ?t fr?m h? m?ð?z h?t, is placed at the periphery carrying new information and it also carries given information due to sharing linear information flow with the preceding rheme. On the other hand, its translated theme is an unmarked topical theme Obiageli placed at the periphery bearing only new information because the given information ?pni m?? ki ?honp??i se kh?n? l?i t?hi (brought food from her mother’s hut) has been shifted into the rheme in (1.2b). Additionally, the sense of nominalization and identification is not found in this translated theme. The omission of nominalization removes the possibility of thematic equative and causes ambiguity in conveying exact meaning. As the English nominalized theme identifies and specifies that Okonkwo was eating that food that only Obiageli brought from her mother’s hut. But its translated topical theme is a declarative statement which means that Okonkwo was eating some other food while Obiageli brought different food from her mother’s hut. In Urdu translation, another ambiguity occurs due to making the rheme of English nominalized clause as the third clause in (1.3b). This extended clause has been joined to the preceding clause in (1.2b) by paratactic conjunction and a conjunctive adjunct. Here, along with the ambiguous meaning, the flow of information is also misleading. To avoid this ambiguity, another translation choice e.g. Obiageli ?o ?pni m?? ki ?honp??i se vo kh?n? l?i t?hi, f?r? p?r bet?hi ?ske x?t??m k?rne k? ?nt?ez?r k?r r?hi t?hi can be considered. The next analysis interprets the English marked nominalized theme into Urdu topical theme.




 

Table 7. Conversion of Marked Nominalized Theme into Topical Theme

English Source Text
CL	Theme			Rheme
	Nominalized/Topical	Displaced
2.1a	s?t? ?ten?n?			w?d ??v ð? ne?t?vz ? p?? ?p?n??n ?v h?m.
2.2a	?n ð? b?k w?t? hi: plænd tu ra?t	hi:		w?d stres ðæt p??nt.
Urdu Target Text
CL	Theme			Rheme
	Adjunct	Topical	Displaced
2.1b	ese moq? p?r mo?ud?gi se		muq?mi log	?ske b?re me? gh?tij? r?e q?em k?r s?kt?e he?.
2.2b		vo		?pni zere t???viz kit??b me? ?s n?kt?e p?r x?susi zor d?eg?.




The English topical theme carrying given information in (2.1a) is translated as an adjunct in the Urdu clause (2.1b). The rheme carrying new information in clause (2.1a) is translated as the displaced theme in (2.1b). Some of the new information in rheme continues to be selected in the following nominalized theme in (2.2a). Despite this linear flow of information, a marked nominalized theme is placed as a peripheral theme carrying new information. And being an adjunct, the marked nominalized theme displaces the topical theme also carrying given information. Moreover, in the Urdu translation, the English marked nominalized theme has been divided into the topical theme and the rheme in (2.2b). The topical theme has no nominalization sense and shares a linear flow of information from its preceding rheme while the rheme has new information in (2.2b). These translation choices create not only ambiguity in conveying appropriate meaning but also problems in delivering exact information. As the English nominalized theme delivers the information that he has planned to write a book, whereas the translated topical theme means a person only. Here, to create a nominalized theme in Urdu, a suitable translation e.g. ?s kit??b me? ??se l?khne k? ?sne so?? t?h? vo ?s n?kt?e p?r x?susi zor d?eg? can be considered. The subsequent clauses explain the nominalized theme in English as an adjunct to Urdu.




 

Table 8. Conversion of Unmarked Nominalized Theme into Adjunct Theme

English Source Text
CL	Theme					Rheme
	Textual			Nominalized/Topical
3.1a	wen			hi:		f?n??t h?z k??l? n?t
3.2a				hi:		sed
3.3a				“ð? ???z ðæt hæp?n ði?z de?z		a: veri stre?nd?”.
Urdu Target Text
CL	Theme					Rheme
	Textual		Adjunct	Topical	Displaced
3.1b	??b			Vo		kola nut k? tuk?? x?t??m k?r ??k?
3.2b	t?o			?sne		k?h?,
3.3b		“?? k?l			??ib v?qej?t?	run?m? ho r?he he?”.

 




These clauses demonstrate the conversion of the English unmarked nominalized theme into Urdu adjunct theme. The English clause in (3.1a) includes hypotactic conjunction as the unmarked textual theme and an unmarked ideational/topical theme carrying given information which continues to be selected in the unmarked ideational/topical theme of the clause (3.2a). The rhemes of both clauses convey new information. The translated Urdu clauses in (3.1b) and (3.2b) have similar thematic structures and flow of information as in the English clauses (3.1a) and (3.2a). But the nominalized theme of the things that happen these days in the English clause (3.3a) has been translated as the adjunct ?? k?l (these days), the displaced theme ??ib v?qej?t? (strange things) and the rheme run?m? ho r?he he? (are happening) in the Urdu clause (3.3b). Here, these English and Urdu themes share the interpersonal context. The English nominalized theme is placed at the periphery having new information. The Urdu adjunct theme and displaced theme are also arranged at the periphery carrying new information but they do not convey any exclusive information in the form of thematic equative. As the English nominalized theme gives a piece of exclusive information that the strange things are only those that happen these days. In other words, no strange happening was observed in the past. On the contrary, the translated adjunct and displaced themes give the impression that these days, strange things are happening and they might have happened in the previous days as well. This ambiguity has occurred due to the absence of nominalization. To secure the thematic nominalization and exclusive information in the Urdu clause (3.3b), the suitable translation choice possible e.g. vo v?qej?t? ?o ?? k?l run?m? hot?e he? boh?t? ??ib he?. The following clauses declare that the English nominalized thematic structure has been converted into the Urdu clauses of correlative conjunction.




 

Table 9. Conversion of Unmarked Nominalized Theme into Correlative Conjunction

English Source Text
CL	Theme		Rheme
	Nominalized/Topical
4.1a	s?t? st??r?z		w? spred ?n ð? w?:ld ba? ð? dev?l tu li:d m?n ?stre?.
4.2a	ð??z hu? b?li?vd s?t? st??r?z		w? ?nw??ði ?v ð? l??dz te?bl?.
Urdu Target Text
CL	Theme		Rheme
	Textual	Topical
4.1b		esi k?h?nij??	?et?n d??nij? me? logo? ko g?mr?h k?rne ke lije ph?l?t?? he.
4.2b	?o	log	?n k?h?nijõ p?r j?kin r?kht?e he?
4.3b	vo	---	?q? ki mæz ke g?rd? bethne ke eh?l n?hi.




This analysis reveals a significant difference in the Urdu translation of English nominalized thematic structure. The English unmarked ideational/topical theme in (4.1a) carries given information which flows down in the following unmarked nominalized theme in (4.2a). Along with the constant information flow, the English unmarked nominalized theme is also a peripheral theme bearing new information. On the other hand, the translated unmarked ideational/topical theme in (4.1b) does not share its information with the following topical theme in (4.2b). Furthermore, the topical theme in (4.2b) is a misleading and ambiguous translation of the English nominalized theme in (4.2a) because it does not have thematic nominalization and exclusiveness. The English nominalized theme encloses an embedded clause who believed such stories which makes the nominal phrase those exclusive and this theme conveys the information that only those people who believe such stories are unworthy of the Lord’s table. Here, some specific believers have been mentioned. On the contrary, the translated Urdu clause in (4.2b) is not marked with nominalization rather it begins with a correlative marker ?o which correlates with the demonstrative vo in the following clause (4.3b). These clauses combined with correlatives do not involve thematic nominalization, so they cannot be recognized as a thematic equative. Consequently, the translated clauses in (4.2b) and (4.3b) give the information that the believers of such stories are unworthy of the Lord’s table. In other words, there remains a possibility that the non-believers of such stories or the believers of any other thing may also be unworthy of the Lord’s table. Such ambiguity is the outcome of the non-restrictive correlatives ?o-vo (which-that). However, another translation choice including restrictive embedded clause seems favorable to avoid misleading information e.g. vo log ?o ?n k?h?nijõ p?r j?kin r?kht?e he? ?q? ki mæz ke g?rd? bethne ke eh?l n?hi.

Conclusion

The conclusions have been drawn out by answering the research questions. First of all, to address the first question of this study, the possible patterns of nominalized themes in English and Urdu have been described. And after the description, it has been justified that both languages have their own specific grammatical realizations to create nominalized thematic structures. The formation of nominalized thematic structures varies due to the verbs marked with gender and numbers. 

The second question has been addressed by analyzing the functional significance and thematic progression of nominalized themes in English and Urdu. It is obvious that both languages equally maintain functions of nominalized thematic structures until the unmotivated displacement of themes is not found. The English and Urdu nominalized themes go parallel in theme markedness but the difference is observed when the thematic information units become rhematic information units. 

The last question has been addressed by screening the nominalized themes from the English and Urdu corpus. After screening, it is concluded that the author of the English text incorporates the nominalized themes to emphasize the most important and certain aspects of information. Likewise, the author of the Urdu text incorporates nominalized themes for the same purposes. It is also concluded that most of the English nominalized thematic structures have not been translated into Urdu properly. During translation, the translator has made unmotivated displacements of themes that are unable to preserve the information focus in the Urdu text. In the end, it is suggested that the translators should be careful about the parameters of nominalized thematic structures in Urdu. In this way, it will be possible to translate the English nominalized thematic structures with their full force and emphasis into Urdu.

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