Insights of European Functionalism's Dual Principles on Second Language Acquisition -- Based on the Prague School's Theme-Rheme Theory and Martinet's Principle of Economy
Abstract
Sentence Perspective (FSP) models sentences as vehicles for managing information flow through a Theme-Rheme articulation (Firbas 1992),
while Martinet's Principle of Economy explains how linguistic systems balance communicative differentiation with minimal articulatory and
cognitive effort (Martinet 1964). This paper explicates these two principles and argues for their joint value in second language acquisition (SLA)
and pedagogy. We show that explicit instruction in Theme-Rheme organization improves discourse coherence (Dejica-C?rti? & Cozma 2013;
Wang 2014), and that the economy perspective motivates principled sequencing of high functional-load resources (Xiang 2017). We further
interpret common learner "simplifications" as adaptive, economical choices under resource constraints and propose scaffolding toward efficient L2 systems.
Keywords
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.70711/neet.v4i7.9793
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