Does linguistic marking have a psychological correlate?

Abstract

This study investigates the psychological correlates of linguistic marking in nouns, verbs, and adjectives covertly marked. Marked and unmarked forms are reliably differentiated by Ss naive with respect to the concept of markedness. The criteria used by Ss in such sorts appeared to be based upon an evaluative feature. Unmarked adjectives are reliably classed in a positive category and marked adjectives into a negative category. Unmarked (present tense) verbs and marked (past tense) verbs are reliably classed in positive and negative categories, respectively. Unmarked (singular) nouns are classed into positive categories and marked (plural) nouns into negative categories if the noun is semantically negative in meaning while the reverse is the case for semantically positive nouns. In addition, oppositional verbs not distinguished by criteria of marking were reliably categorized into positive and negative categories.