Comparative and Contrastive Studies of Information Structure -- Editorial page -- Title page -- LCC data -- Table of contents -- Preface -- List of contributors -- List of abbreviations -- Introduction -- References -- Contrastive topics and distributed foci as instances of sub-informativity -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Terminological remarks on information structural categories -- 3. Contrastive topics, distributed foci and sub-informativity -- 3.1 Three theories of contrastive topicicality -- 3.2 Sub-informativity -- 4. Types of sub-informativity -- 5. Lexical indicators of sub-informativity -- 6. Syntactic indicators of sub-informativity -- 6.1 Fronting in English -- 6.2 Movement to the Forefield in German -- 7. Prosodic indicators of sub-informativity -- 7.1 English: The fall-rise contour -- 7.1.1 Definition and representation -- 7.1.2 The function of the fall-rise -- 7.2 The German root contour -- 7.2.1 Definition and representation -- 7.2.2 The distribution of the root contour -- 7.3 Contrasts between English and German -- 8. Conclusions -- References -- Givenness and discourse anaphors -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Catalan dislocation and English deaccenting -- 3. Catalan and English contrasts -- 4. But English deaccenting ≠ Catalan Clitic Right Dislocation -- 5. Stress, focus and givenness -- 6. Phonetic form -- 7. Syntax - discourse - Phonetic Form -- 8. Conclusion -- References -- Constraints on subject-focus mapping in French and English -- 1. Focus structure across languages: Some examples -- 2. Constraints on the mapping from information structure to grammatical form -- 3. Mapping constraints and preferred clause structure in spoken French -- 4. Secondary predication constructions -- 4.1 Argument-focus constructions -- 4.2 Sentence-focus constructions -- 5. Concluding remarks -- References -- Wh-questions in French and English.

1. Introduction -- 2. Form and function of French wh-questions -- 2.1 Statistics -- 2.2 Type 1: Wh in situ questions -- 2.3 Type 2: Wh fronted + SVO -- 2.4 Type 3: Wh fronted + subject-verb inversion -- 2.5 Type 4: Wh-fronting + est-ce que + SVO -- 2.6 Conclusion -- 3. The pragmatic functions of English wh-questions -- 4. The diachronic perspective -- 4.1 Word order change -- 4.2 Contributing factors -- 4.3 Wh-pronouns -- 5. Formal analysis -- 5.1 Syntactic optionality -- 5.2 Pronouns -- 5.2.1 Subject pronouns and interrogative syntax in French -- 5.2.2 Wh-pronouns in French -- 5.2.3 Northern Italian dialects -- 5.2.4 Wh-doubling" in French -- 5.2.5 Wh-pronouns in English -- 6. Conclusion -- References -- A comparative perspective on intensive reflexives -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Background -- 2.1 The intensive reflexive in English and Hebrew -- 2.2 Previous analyses -- 3. Intensive reflexives - monosemy -- 4. Intensive reflexive scope -- 4.1 Scope effects with intensive reflexives -- 4.2 Intensive reflexive scope and information status -- 5. Conclusion -- References -- Printed sources of data -- Focus types and argument asymmetries -- 1. Preliminaries -- 2. Strategies for expressing narrow focus -- 2.1 Focus in situ -- 2.2 Reordering -- 2.3 Cleft constructions -- 3. Method -- 4. Results -- 4.1 Georgian -- 4.2 Hungarian -- 4.3 American English -- 4.4 Québec French -- 5. Discussion -- 5.1 Summary of empirical findings -- 5.2 Interaction with grammatical possibilities -- 5.3 Minimality condition -- 5.4 Asymmetry of focused arguments -- 5.5 Asymmetry of focus types -- 6. Conclusions -- References -- Topicality in L1 acquisition -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The notion of topic in adult and early child speech -- 3. Previous research on child encoding of information -- 4. Subjects and subject omission in adult and child French and German.

5. The analysis of the child speech data -- 5.1 The children included in the study -- 5.2 Methodology and characteristics of the study -- 5.3 Results of the study -- 5.3.1 The frequency of child subject omission and realization -- 5.3.2 The feature specification of child subject omission and realization -- 6. Discussion -- 7. Conclusion -- References -- Formal and functional constraints on constituent order and their universality -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Basic assumptions -- 3. Earlier approaches to discourse configurationality and word order -- 3.1. Subject-prominence vs. topic-prominence -- 3.2 Subject and topic positions in hierarchical phrase structure -- 3.3 Does the EPP approach yield a proper classification of languages? -- 3.4 Linearisation without functional phrases -- 4. Topicality, perspectivation, and linearisation -- 4.1 On the notion of topicality -- 4.2 Perspectivation' -- 5. Conclusion: Towards a model of interacting constraints on linearisation -- References -- On the foundations of the contrastive study of information structure -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Ontological and methodological aspects -- 2.1 The distinctive features of contrastive analysis in general -- 2.2 The distinctive features applied to contrastive information structure analysis -- 2.2.1 Tertium comparationis on the meaning/function side -- 2.2.2 Tertium comparationis on the form side -- 2.3 Relativising the methodological ideal -- 3. Examples of contrastive information structure analyses in the present volume -- 4. Conclusion -- References -- Subject index -- The series Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today.