In the last few years a lively discussion on information packaging has arisen, where traditional dichotomies Theme/Rheme, Topic/Comment and Focus/Background have been taken up again and partly reinterpreted. The discussion is mainly being held in syntax, but also in the fields of semantics and pragmatics. Some remarkable progress has been made especially in Focus phonology.
Even if the role of information conveying and information packaging in the Indoeuropean languages was hinted at as early as in the classical studies of the Neogrammarians, this field has remained neglected in...