1 Grammar and Information Structure: A novel view based on Russian data Natalia Slioussar Utrecht institute of Linguistics OTS and St.Petersburg State University slioussar@gmail.com, n.slioussar@uu.nl Abstract: This paper analyzes word order alternations, stress shifts and intonational contours related to Information Structure (IS). The data come primarily from Russian, a language that is very rich in this respect. I argue that IS-related grammatical phenomena encode relative accessibility (whether A is more or less accessible than B), rather than some categorical accessibility distinctions (e.g. whether A and B are given or new) and contrast (broadly conceived). Topic and focus are not encoded in the grammar, although they closely correlate with certain grammatical phenomena. I show how the proposed approach allows solving some notorious problems in the IS field. Relative accessibility cannot be encoded by means of dedicated IS features like Top or F(oc), which forces the choice of configurational approaches. Most of them view prosodic means of encoding as primary and derive syntactic phenomena from them (movement into or out of the main stress position). I present several arguments for the primacy of syntactic means and develop an IS model relying on syntactic configurations. They are derived using edge features proposed in Phase Theory after certain modifications are introduced in this framework. Keywords: Information Structure, relative accessibility, contrast, topic, focus, syntactic configuration, Russian