Information flow

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For other meanings of equivocation, see Information flow (disambiguation).

In discourse-based grammatical theory, information flow is any tracking of referential information by speakers. Information flow affects grammatical structures such as

• word order (topic, focus, and afterthought constructions)
• active, passive, or middle voice
• choice of deixis, such as articles; proximal, medial, and distal deictics such as Spanish este, ese, aquel, are often determined by the familiarity of a referent as much as by physical distance
• overtness of information, such as whether an argument of a verb is indicated by a lexical noun phrase, a pronoun, or not mentioned at all.