The papers in this volume focus on the impact of information structure on language acquisition, thereby taking different linguistic approaches into account. They start from an empirical point of view, and examine data from natural first and second language acquisition, which cover a wide range of varieties, from early learner language to native speaker production and from gesture to Creole prototypes. The central theme is the interplay between principles of information structure and linguistic structure and its impact on the functioning and development of the learner's system. The papers examine language-internal explanatory factors and in particular the communicative and structural forces that push and shape the acquisition process, and its outcome. On the theoretical level, the approach adopted appeals both to formal and communicative constraints on a learner’s language in use. Two empirical domains provide a 'testing ground' for the respective weight of grammatical versus functional determinants in the acquisition process: (1) the expression of finiteness and scope relations at the utterance level and (2) the expression of anaphoric relations at the discourse level. Table of contentsIntroduction 1–12 I. Finiteness and scope relations Development of verb morphology and finiteness in children and adults acquiring French Suzanne Schlyter 15–44 “Tinkering” with chunks: Form-oriented strategies and idiosyncratic utterance patterns without functional implications in the IL of Turkish speaking children learning German Stefanie Haberzettl 45–63 Finiteness in Germanic languages: A stage-model for first and second language development Christine Dimroth, Petra Gretsch, Peter Jordens, Clive Perdue and Marianne Starren 65–93 On the similarities of L1 and L2 acquisition: How German children anchor utterances in time Petra Gretsch 95–117 Negation and relational predicates in French and English as second languages Patrizia Giuliano 119–157 The copula in learner Italian: Finiteness and verbal inflection Giuliano Bernini 159–185 The interaction between the development of verb morphology and the acquisition of temporal adverbs of contrast: A longitudinal study in French, English and German L2 Sandra Benazzo 187–210 Merging scope particles: Word order variation and the acquisition of aussi and ook in a bilingual context Aafke Hulk 211–234 Creole prototypes as basic varieties and inflectional morphology Angelika Becker and Tonjes Veenstra 235–264 II. Anaphoric relations Information structure in narratives and the role of grammaticised knowledge: A study of adult French and German learners of English Mary Carroll and Monique Lambert 267–287 Acquiring the linkage between syntactic, semantic and informational roles in narratives by Spanish learners of German Jorge Murcia-Serra 289–309 Gestures, referents, and anaphoric linkage in learner varieties Marianne Gullberg 311–328 The development of anaphoric means to refer to space and entities in the acquisition of French by Polish learners Marzena Watorek-Adorno 329–355 Subject index 357–359