A study of the distinguishing features of three functional concepts: topic, focus, and theme in Persian

The present study is an attempt to investigate the syntactic, information and lexical features of theme, topic and focus as three functional concepts, conducted based on Halliday’s Functional Theory and Chomsky’s Minimalist Program. The study sheds light on these concepts and their common and distinguishing points.First, topic and focus are defined and then a concise definition of theme is presented based on Halliday’s Functional Theory. Finally, based on the definitions provided in the study and distinguishing these concepts from each other, the main question of the study, i.e. the possibility of defining a Theme Phrase in Persian is considered within the framework of Minimalist Program.