Abstract
Antonym pair members can be differentiated by each word’s markedness–that distinction attributable to the presence or absence of features at morphological or semantic levels. Morphologically marked words incorporate their unmarked counterpart with additional morphs (e.g., “unlucky” vs. “lucky”); properties used to determine semantically marked words (e.g., “short” vs. “long”) are less clearly defined. Despite extensive theoretical scrutiny, the lexical properties of markedness have received scant empirical study. The current paper employs an antonym sequencing approach to measure markedness: establishing markedness probabilities for individual words and evaluating their relationship with other lexical properties (e.g., length, frequency, valence). Regression analyses reveal that markedness probability is, as predicted, related to affixation and also strongly related to valence. Our results support the suggestion that antonym sequence is reflected in discourse, and further analysis demonstrates that markedness probabilities, derived from the antonym sequencing task, reflect the ordering of antonyms within natural language. In line with the Pollyanna Hypothesis, we argue that markedness is closely related to valence; language users demonstrate a tendency to present words evaluated positively ahead of those evaluated negatively if given the choice. Future research should consider the relationship of markedness and valence, and the influence of contextual information in determining which member of an antonym pair is marked or unmarked within discourse.
Highlights
The concept of markedness concerns the relationship between a pair of antonymous or complementary terms
Formal accounts of markedness would suggest that one member of the pair is physically marked whilst the other is unmarked; semantic markedness would suggest that the words within the pair are differentiated by the presence or absence of a certain property [1, 2, 3]
We examined the relationship between this markedness probability measure and other linguistic factors, determining which factors may be used to predict the markedness probability of a word
Summary
The concept of markedness concerns the relationship between a pair of antonymous or complementary terms. Formal accounts of markedness would suggest that one member of the pair is physically marked whilst the other is unmarked; semantic markedness would suggest that the words within the pair are differentiated by the presence or absence of a certain property [1, 2, 3]. The additional “mark” on one member of a pair of opposites established the notion of markedness [1, 2]. Semantic markedness pertains to antonymous pairs of adjectives, scalar terms [4], in which unmarked members (e.g., “long”) are considered to be the default or neutral term in most contexts, whilst the marked member (e.g., “short”) cannot be used generically. In the following article we provide a brief overview of theoretical debates on the factors which lead to one of a pair’s members being marked, and consider research which has examined markedness and its effects. We use an antonym sequencing task to seek to identify the lexical and semantic factors which contribute to markedness
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