In the process of constructing a message, we need to take two things into consideration: to construct an informative message and to provide an unambiguous starting point of the message for the sake of courtesy to the receiver and convenience for ourselves. The first task is fulfilled by the new information that we intend to offer, the second by the given information. The new information, as it is assumed to be unfamilliar to the receiver, is the most important part of the information unit in terms of "new value" and is thus closely linked with the information focus. The given information, on the other hand, is assumed to be familiar to the recevier because it was explicitly provided in the preceding linguistic context or implicitly provided in view of the situational context or the shared cultural backgroud. Its function is one of providing a link between the sentence in question and chained in such a way as to form a conherent text. As a rule, in connected speech or writing, the sentences we produce tend to proceed from what is taken to be given to what is taken to be new.