This volume contains innovative papers that target the linguistic status of topic at the
interface between grammar and discourse. The purpose of the volume is to discuss the universal
properties of topics and at the same time to document the range of discourse-semantic and
grammatical variation within this phenomenon in European languages. The volume is structured
accordingly: (i) theoretical foundations of topicality in grammar and discourse (ii)
discourse-semantic correlates of topicality (iii) variation in the grammatical (external and
internal) encoding of topicality (iv) topics from the diachronic perspective. The articles
take different perspectives including contrastive studies of modern languages studies on
diachronic development and typological generalizations. They also take into consideration
various types of empirical data - introspective data semi-spontaneously produced data
experimental data and language corpora. The articles in this volume show that the concept of
topic is necessary for the description and explanation of a number of discourse-semantic
phenomena. They present a state of the art account of the architecture of topic while making
recent research on the phenomenon accessible to a wider readership.
