Abstract
<jats:p>Information structure refers to the packaging of information in languages and includes notions such as focus, topic, givenness, et cetera. These categories can be realized by different morphosyntactic and prosodic means. In the case of historical texts, the study of information structure presents a number of challenges, for example, due to the lack of access to prosodic information or the judgments of native speakers. To overcome these difficulties, various corpus annotation systems have been developed based on the use of information from discourse context, word order patterns, referential expressions, et cetera. These have contributed significantly to the advancement of research on information structure in diachrony. Several case studies on language change phenomena in Germanic and Romance languages illustrate how research on syntactic change can benefit from taking into account information‐structural aspects.</jats:p>