Abstract and Keywords
This article examines cases that illustrate the relation of information structure to truth-conditional semantics, grammatical form, and assertoric force. Before discussing the interaction between information structure and (non-)at-issue meaning, it considers the nature of information and what constitutes information. It then looks at two aspects of the common ground, common ground (CG) content and CG management, as well as the criteria of category membership. The article also explores the varying degrees of at-issueness, the role of rhetorical opposition and but clauses, as well as the variable strength of at-issue content. The landscape of non-at-issue meaning is presented, and the distinction between conventional implicature and assertorically inert entailments is highlighted using a range of distributional diagnostics. The article concludes by analysing the relation between structural focus and exhaustivity using the semantic and pragmatic approaches.
Keywords: information structure, truth-conditional semantics, grammatical form, assertoric force, at-issueness, rhetorical opposition, non-at-issue meaning, implicature, structural focus, exhaustivity
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