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theme. The translator should be overwary as to the identification
of theme-rheme elements so that he can, with an appreciable degree
of accuracy, convey the meaning the source is thought to have
intended.
Obligatory meaning structures can be easily identified if
one understands the logic underlying the grammatical and lexical
relationships between words in sentences and sentences in a
discourse. The identification process is further consolidated
through the individual's acquaintance with the existential
realities self-emerging from or extraneous to the text. The
translator's cognizance of external realities in spacio-temporal
terms and his understanding of the logic underlying the lexical and
grammatical relationships holding between the micro-textual
elements will help him identify the semantic structures dispersed
within the text. In his distinction between logic and
linguistics, Leech, (1974, p150) defines the logician's aim as
being "typically normative rather than descriptive". He concludes
that the logician is not so much interested in how we actually do
organize our thoughts in language, as in how we ought to do so if
we are to avoid the fallacious reasoning which arises from
ambiguity, contradiction, structural confusion, etc. Symbolic
logicians, therefore, gave up natural languages in favour of
artificial formal languages, which they treated as calculi, and set
out to formulate norms or systems to govern them. In natural
languages, however, texts or discourses are longer stretches of
langauge instances laden with meaning. The meaning can be
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