Georg von der Gabelentz as a pioneer of information structure

In 1869, Gabelentz introduced the terms ‘psychological subject’ and ‘psychological predicate’, which are generally regarded as predecessors of information structural terms such as ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’, and ‘topic’ and ‘comment’. Together with some other linguists – Henri Weil (1818–1909), Philipp Wegener (1848–1916), Hermann Paul (1846–1921) – Gabelentz belonged to the first generation of theorists of information structure. This chapter focuses on Gabelentz’s specific contribution to this area. Unlike his fellow pioneers in this area, Gabelentz developed his ideas exclusively in the context of questions about word order. He actively tried to apply them to a wide variety of languages, and to embed them in the framework of Völkerpsychologie. These contextual factors explain many unique characteristics of Gabelentz’s variety of information structure, for example his exclusive focus on what is nowadays called the ‘aboutness’ aspect of information structure.