This paper sketches the view that syntax does not directly interact with information structure. Therefore, syntactic data are of little help when one wants to narrow down the interpretation of terms such as “focus”, “topic”, etc.
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.
The guidelines for morphological annotation contain the layers that are necessary for understanding the structure of the words in the object language: morphological segmentation, glossing, and annotation of part-of-speech.