Markedness

Markedness is a linguistic concept that developed out of the Prague School (also known as the Prague linguistic circle).

A marked form is a non-basic or less natural form. An unmarked form is a basic, default form. For example, lion is the unmarked choice in English — it could refer to a male or female lion. But lioness is marked because it can only refer to females. The unmarked forms, usually male nouns serve as general terms: e.g. brotherhood of man includes all people, both men and women, while sisterhood refers only to women. The form of a word that is conventionally chosen to be the lemma form is typically the form that is the least marked.

Markedness originally developed from phonology — where phonetic symbols were literally marked to indicate additional features, such as voicing, nasalization or roundedness. Markedness is still an influential concept in current phonological theory. In Optimality Theory many of the central arguments concerning constraints and ordering have to do with the markedness of a form.

The concept of markedness has been extended to other areas of grammar as well, such as morphology, syntax and semantics. Markedness is a somewhat fuzzy notion, especially when it is not made clear whether something is marked phonetically, phonologically, morphologically, syntacticly, or semantically. There are few strict criteria to determine which forms are considered more marked and which are not.

References

• Trask, R.L. (1999). Key Concepts in Language and Linguistics. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-15742-0.

See also

• Marker (linguistics)
• Lemma (linguistics)
• Inflection
• Lexeme
• Null morpheme

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