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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Markedness | 3/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markedness | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T07:13:13.402808+00:00 | kb-cron |
We will assume that [Universal Grammar] is not an 'undifferentiated' system, but rather incorporates something analogous to a 'theory of markedness.' Specifically, there is a theory of core grammar with highly restricted options, limited expressive power, and a few parameters. Systems that fall within core grammar constitute 'the unmarked case'; we may think of them as optimal in terms of the evaluation metric. An actual language is determined by fixing the parameters of core grammar and then adding rules or conditions, using much richer resources, ... These added properties of grammars we may think of as the syntactic analogue of irregular verbs. A few years later, Chomsky describes it thus:
The distinction between core and periphery leaves us with three notions of markedness: core versus periphery, internal to the core, and internal to the periphery. The second has to do with the way parameters are set in the absence of evidence. As for the third, there are, no doubt, significant regularities even in departures from the core principles (for example, in irregular verb morphology in English), and it may be that peripheral constructions are related to the core in systematic ways, say by relaxing certain conditions of core grammar. Some generative researchers have applied markedness to second-language acquisition theory, treating it as an inherent learning hierarchy which reflects the sequence in which constructions are acquired, the difficulty of acquiring certain constructions, and the transferability of rules across languages. More recently, optimality theory approaches emerging in the 1990s have incorporated markedness in the ranking of constraints.
== See also ==
Inflection Lemma (morphology) Lexeme Male as norm Marker (linguistics) Matthews correlation coefficient Null morpheme Other (philosophy) Underlying representation
== References ==
== Further reading == Andersen, Henning 1989 "Markedness—The First 150 Years", In Markedness in Synchrony and Diachrony. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Andrews, Edna 1990 Markedness Theory: The Union of Asymmetry and Semiosis in Language, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Archangeli, Diana 1997 "Optimality Theory: An Introduction to Linguistics in the 1990s", In Optimality Theory: An Overview. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Battistella, Edwin 1990 Markedness: The Evaluative Superstructure of Language, Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Battistella, Edwin 1996 The Logic of Markedness, New York: Oxford University Press. Chandler, Daniel 2002/2007 Semiotics: The Basics, London: Routledge. Chandler, Daniel 2005 Entry on markedness. In John Protevi (ed.) (2005) Edinburgh Dictionary of Continental Philosophy, Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press. Chomsky, Noam & Halle, Morris 1968 The Sound Pattern of English, New York: Harper and Row. Greenberg, Joseph Language Universals, The Hague: Mouton, 1966. Trask, R. L. 1999 Key Concepts in Language and Linguistics, London and New York: Routledge.