Abstract

This chapter is an introduction to the Oxford Handbook of Information Structure. After introducing the goals of the handbook and a brief history of information structure studies, this introductory chapter provides the definitions of the key notions of information structure in Krifka, which were used as the baseline for all the chapters of the handbook. The Handbook is organized in four parts: an overview of various linguistic theories of information structure in semantics, pragmatics, morpho-syntax and phonology ; case studies of various information structure-related topics ; the state of the art in the study of information structure from experimental perspectives ; and chapters discussing information structure in selected languages or language families. The introduction contains short summaries of each of the chapters in the Handbook.