Linguistic expressions are shaped by what they mean and the context in which they are used. Part of this context concerns the assumptions that language users entertain about their interlocutors' state of knowledge. The project explores to what extent these assumptions - operationalised as 'informational articulations' - impact surface structure, and whether their cross-linguistic distribution can shed some light on the mutual orientation of these articulations in conceptual space. To this end, a typological analysis is conducted on fifteen genetically unrelated languages. Articulations are identified on the basis of context, and the corresponding expression strategies are rated for their informational multifunctionality or lack thereof. On the basis of these data, the form-function interactions are classified in terms of 'informational alignment' and are compared cross-linguistically. It appears that the clustering of articulations in surface structure reveals the relevance of three cross-linguistically valid organisational dimensions in the domain of information structuring.
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