The acquisition of information structure Christine Dimroth and Bhuvana Narasimhan 1. Introduction Linguistic expressions of information structure, i.e., the formal reflexes of an utterance’s co(n)text integration, have recently gotten quite some attention in the study of first as well as second language acquisition. The primary dimensions of information structure that are often addressed in the acquisi- tion literature include givenness (maintained vs. new information), aboutness (topic vs. comment) as well as emphasis and highlighting (e.g., contrastive topic, focus). Core questions that have been addressed in this area involve the following: 1. Do first and second language learners adapt their utterances to their hearer’s informational needs from early on? 2. When do language learners home in on language-specific preferences for information selection and distribution in longer stretches of discourse? Can adult L2 learners ever become native-like in this respect? 3. Do language learners express the same kinds of information structure relations as adult native speakers (e.g., topic, comment, given, new, focus, contrast) using the same devices (e.g., word order, referential devices, intonation, particles)? Child and adult learners begin to use linguistic devices such as pronouns, word order, prosody, particles, ellipses, and so on at a relatively early stage of acquisition. However, the use of these elements for marking information structure, e.g., for the expression of discourse integration or their interpre- tation does not always correspond to their use in the target language, i.e., the language spoken in the learners’ social environment. Most studies have either considered first or at second language acqui- sition separately. Direct comparisons are the exception, but the general assumption is that the two types of acquisition follow a different logic and, in particular, are typically characterized by different outcomes: Children usually seem to reach the target, whereas adults are observed as not reaching the target, whereby the question might be raised of how to determine what the target is. (…) adults are generally assumed to start