The annotation guidelines introduced in this chapter present an attempt to create a unique infrastructure for the encoding of data from very different languages. The ultimate target of these annotations is to allow for data retrieval for the study of information structure, and since information structure interacts with all levels of grammar, the present guidelines cover all levels of grammar too. After introducing the guidelines, the current chapter also presents an evaluation by means of measurements of the inter-annotator agreement.

The guidelines for syntactic annotation contain the layers that are especially relevant for queries related to the interaction of information structure with syntax. The layers of this level are constituent structure, grammatical functions, and semantic roles.