Thetical grammar forms one of the two domains of discourse grammar, the other domain being sentence grammar. The building blocks of thetical grammar are theticalsKaltenböck defines it as 'the non locative meaning' of a discourse element such as between you and me. KNK2011 p. 2, that is, linguistic expressions which are interpolated in, or juxtaposed to, clauses or sentences but syntactically, semantically and, typically, prosodically independent from theses structures.
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It has been the only, or the main subject of mainstream theories of linguistics. The concern of Thetical Grammar is with theticals, that is, with linguistic discourse units beyond the sentence, being syntactically, semantically, and typically also prosodically detached from expressions of Sentence Grammar. These units include what is traditionally referred to as parenthetical constructions but are not restricted to them. The main categories of Thetical Grammar are conceptual theticals (including comment clauses, discourse markers, etc.) as well as various other extra-clausal categories such as vocatives, formulae of social exchange, and interjections.
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Furthermore, there is reason to assume that the distinction between Sentence Grammar and Thetical Grammar may shed new light on the question of how human language or languages evolved. Finally, a considerable part of the research is devoted to the question of whether the distinction between the two domains is reflected in neural activity. As this research suggests, there appears to be a corresponding distinction in brain lateralization, in that Sentence Grammar correlates primarily with left-hemisphere activity whereas Thetical grammar appears to be more strongly associated with right-hemisphere activation.
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While being separate in principle, the two domains interact in multiple ways in shaping linguistic discourse. The main way of interaction is via cooptation, an operation whereby chunks of Sentence Grammar such as clauses, phrases, words, or any other units are deployed for use in Thetical Grammar.
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The two domains are associated with contrasting principles of designing texts: Whereas sentence grammar is essentially restricted to the structure of sentences in a propositional format, thetical grammar concerns the overall contours of discourse beyond the sentence, thereby being responsible for a higher level of discourse production.
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Cooptation is a cognitive-communicative operation whereby a piece of text, such as a clause, a phrase, a word, or any other unit, is inserted in a sentence. In the framework of Discourse Grammar, cooptation is understood as leading to the transfer of linguistic material from the domain of Sentence Grammar to that of Thetical Grammar.
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DG is composed of all the linguistic resources that are available for designing texts, irrespective of whether these are spoken or written (or signed) texts. It is viewed both as an activity, a real-time interactional tool, and a knowledge store consisting of a set of conventional linguistic units plus their combinatorial potential. An elementary distinction between two main domains of speech processing is made, referred to as Sentence Grammar and Thetical Grammar. Sentence Grammar is organized in terms of propositional concepts and clauses and their combination.
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More detailed research has been carried out already on Akie, a traditional hunter-gatherer language of the Nilotic family spoken in north-central Tanzania. A grammar of this language based on DG has been published, the use of theticals in the organization of texts has been studied, and institutional frames surfacing from the analysis of Akie texts have been identified using Thetical Grammar as a basis. In another line of research, DG has been extended to the study of language contact. As the work on the discourse in bilingual situations has shown, theticals play an important role both in code-switching and borrowing.
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That discourse organization operates simultaneously in two different dimensions has also been pointed out in a number of other research traditions. Thus, a distinction akin to that between Sentence Grammar and Thetical Grammar is also made in some psycholinguistic studies on comprehension where a contrast between propositional representation and discourse model is made, and in neurolinguistic discourse analysis there is a related distinction between referential and modalizing speech. In other frameworks, specific manifestations of the distinction are highlighted, such as that between microgrammar and macrogrammar, or between an analytic and a holistic mode of processing, or between conceptual and procedural meaning in the theory of Relevance Grammar.
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Sentence Grammar is organized in terms of propositional concepts and clauses and their combination while Thetical Grammar concerns the linguistic discourse beyond the sentence. While being in principle separate domains, the two interact in various ways in organizing linguistic discourse, and the main way of interaction is via cooptation. Cooptation is fully productive, that is, it can be employed by speakers any time to structure speech. As long as the hearer can be expected to construct a reasonable hypothesis on the relevance of the coopted unit to the utterance concerned there are few restrictions on what form the coopted unit may take and where it can be placed in its host construction.
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