It is well known that intonation can play a major role in conveying information
structure, distinguishing such elements of the message as focus and topic, and such
features of referents as givenness and identifiability. We also know that languages and
even dialects can vary substantially in their prosodic patterns. This variability raises
questions about the universality of the relationship between intonation and information
structure. Comparisons of some typologically diverse languages show that the two can
indeed be related systematically, not only to each other but also to certain major
morphological and syntactic typological features. Deeper comparisons allow us to move
beyond typological classification to an understanding of why these features co-occur,
once we consider the chains of events by which they develop over time.
