A thorough examination of the diverse ways in which the concept of markedness has been used and a discussion of how to better capture those ideas.
Excerpt :
Since it was first proposed by Nicholas Trubetzkoy and Roman Jakobson in the 1930s, the term 'markedness' has been very popular in linguistics. It was embraced by European structuralism, generative phonology, functional-typological linguistics, Chomskyan principles-and-parameters syntax, neo-Gricean pragmatics, Optimality Theory, first and second language acquisition, creole studies, and probably other research areas as well. In the course of this process, two things happened. First, not surprisingly, the term 'markedness' developed a multiplicity of sometimes widely diverging senses that linguists who use it are often not aware of. Secondly, 'markedness' lost its association with a particular theoretical approach and became established as an almost theory-neutral everyday term in linguistics. Even though most linguists will be happy to accept that 'markedness' has sometimes been used inappropriately, I expect many readers to be surprised that it should be possible to argue for the downright elimination of 'mark- edness' from linguists' theoretical arsenal.
