information structure has been described at length by a number of linguists as a grammatical phenomenon. lexicogrammatical structures that code prominence, or focus, of some information over other information has a particularly significant history dating back to the 19th century. recent attempts to explain focus phenomena in terms of discourse function, including those by knud lambrecht and talmy givón, often connect focus with the packaging of new, old, and contrasting information. lambrecht in particular distinguishes three main types of focus constructions: predicate-focus structure, argument-focus structure, and sentence-focus structure. focus has also been linked to other more general cognitive processes, including attention orientation.