informationstruktur

Informationstruktur, or information structure, is a field in linguistics that examines how sentences and larger texts are organized to signal what is already known (given) and what is new, as well as what the discourse is about (the topic) and what is being emphasized (the focus). It deals with how speakers guide listeners’ interpretation through discourse progression, and how information structure interacts with syntax, prosody, and context across languages.

Core concepts include theme (the topic) and rheme (the comment or focus). The theme introduces known or given information; the rheme provides new or contrastive information. Focus can be broad or contrastive, drawing attention to specific constituents. Information structure is commonly conveyed by prosody—intonation and pitch accents—and, in some languages, by word order or grammatical particles. For example, shifting a sentence’s focus to a particular constituent often changes its position or intonation to mark prominence.

Cross-linguistic variation is a hallmark of information structure. Some languages prefer topic-first word orders, while others rely more on prosodic marking or morphological cues to indicate givenness and focus. Researchers analyze information structure through corpus studies, perception and production experiments, and discourse annotation to understand how IS functions in real communication.

Applications extend beyond linguistics. In information design and human-computer interaction, information structure informs how content is organized for readability and navigation. In natural language processing, IS concepts assist in text generation, discourse parsing, summarization, and dialogue systems to produce coherent, user-oriented discourse.