Markedness Research Articles

The Relative Which with Personal Antecedents in Shakespeare’s History Plays

This paper examines Shakespeare’s use of the relative which with personal antecedents. The personal use of which was acceptable in Shakespeare’s period, when the animacy parameter had not yet been established for the choice of relative pronouns, although it was being replaced by who and whom and became confined to things in the eighteenth century. I shall analyse contexts where Shakespeare has his characters use personal which in his history plays, demonstrating that it tends to appear when the speaking character is superior in social status to his/her referent(s) or highly emotional, usually displaying anger towards them; otherwise, the referent is dead or present as a corpse. The history plays I examined provide 39 instances of personal which, and at least one of these three factors are relevant in 38 cases. Interestingly, Shakespeare is known to use thou in the same contexts in place of you, the more ordinary or unmarked form as the singular second person pronoun. In conclusion, Shakespeare did not consider which as a simple variant for who(m); instead, he must have found which to be a marked form, exploiting it in particular contexts where thou was generally preferred.

Deriving reversal in Old French nominal inflection

In this paper, we study Old French declension, a system which exhibits the theoretically challenging phenomenon of morphological reversal (Baerman, 2007). Furthermore, the declension system of Old French only recognises a single exponent -s, which marks different case/number combinations in different paradigms, contrasting with the unmarked form. We show that reversal is only one of several syncretism patterns found in the language and propose that Old French declension is best understood in terms of two systematic syncretisms: a natural split between singular and plural for feminines, and a Paninian split for masculines that systematically marks the objective plural. Reversal, and other seemingly morphomic splits arise as a result of idiosyncrasy in the NOM.SG cell, comprising inflection class-specific s-marking, as well as stem alternation and overabundance. We provide a formal analysis in terms of Information-based Morphology (Crysmann & Bonami, 2016) that effortlessly captures the systematic splits, as well as the variation in the nominative singular. We suggest that the high degree of idiosyncrasy in this cell paired with the reduced frequency of overt nominative NPs when compared to objective NPs may serve to explain why the system was actually quite short-lived.

An Investigation of the Marked Parallel Structure in Alice Munro’s “Amundsen”

Parallel structure is one linguistic feature implemented to bring aesthetics to the delivery of the English language. Traditional grammar and writing classes usually emphasize that parallelism must be observed when the language is used. In literature, as well as in real-life usage, however, parallelism is often flaunted to effect various purposes, a fact that is generally overlooked in grammar classrooms. In the present study, the concept of linguistic markedness is applied to the investigation of the parallel structure in Alice Munro’s short story “Amundsen” in order to explore the pragmatic usage of parallelism, as opposed to the grammatical usage listed in general commercial grammar textbooks and to answer the research question: How and for what purposes is parallel structure flaunted in Alice Munro’s short story “Amundsen”? The investigation of the marked parallel structure in Alice Munro’s short story “Amundsen” shows that approximately one out of four instances of parallel structure is flaunted to effect emphasis, exaggeration, elaboration and evaluation, which affirms that parallelism is routinely observed as well as purposefully flaunted to bring about linguistic flavours that reflect hands-on usage of the language.

The Intransitive Usage of the English Verb Lay in COCA and BNC

One of the most confusing sets of English verbs is lay and lie; the former has been used as an intransitive verb in the place of the latter with or without speakers’ cognizance of their correct usage (National Council of Teachers of English, 1956). Using two corpora, Corpus of Contemporary American English and the British National Corpus, this study examined 1) whether lay as an intransitive verb is more frequently used in American than British contexts and 2) whether it is found more often in spoken English than written English. The frequencies of the present participle of lay plus prepositions, on and in, were counted in COCA and BNC, and their normalized indexes were compared for analysis. The results showed that lay as an intransitive verb has been used more frequently in American than in British English, which implies that British speakers are more reluctant to accept the marked language form than their American counterparts. Spoken English is found to be more tolerant of non-standard forms than written English. The study suggests this intransitive usage of the English verb lay, though still a marked form, should be taught to ESL/EFL learners along with its unmarked form as a transitive verb.

The Intransitive Usage of the English Verb Lay in COCA and BNC

One of the most confusing sets of English verbs is lay and lie; the former has been used as an intransitive verb in the place of the latter with or without speakers’ cognizance of their correct usage (National Council of Teachers of English, 1956). Using two corpora, Corpus of Contemporary American English and the British National Corpus, this study examined 1) whether lay as an intransitive verb is more frequently used in American than British contexts and 2) whether it is found more often in spoken English than written English. The frequencies of the present participle of lay plus prepositions, on and in, were counted in COCA and BNC, and their normalized indexes were compared for analysis. The results showed that lay as an intransitive verb has been used more frequently in American than in British English, which implies that British speakers are more reluctant to accept the marked language form than their American counterparts. Spoken English is found to be more tolerant of non-standard forms than written English. The study suggests this intransitive usage of the English verb lay, though still a marked form, should be taught to ESL/EFL learners along with its unmarked form as a transitive verb.

Social meaning in a shifting grammatical landscape: The perception of nonagreement in existential there constructions

Although number nonagreement is typically stigmatized and relatively uncommon in English, it is the norm in existential there constructions. Specifically, the nonagreeing form there's + NPpl enjoys widespread use and acceptance – most speakers use there's more frequently than even plural forms (e.g. there are) to introduce plural nouns. Moreover, it has been argued that there's + NPpl is becoming more frequent and socially accepted over time. This study uses social perception experiments to analyze whether there's + NPpl is becoming the unmarked form for introducing plural nouns in the present tense. The results of these experiments demonstrate that (1) there's + NPpl is sociolinguistically distinct from other singular, nonagreeing forms (e.g. there is), (2) the use of there's + NPpl appears to lack any social stigma, even among listeners who describe themselves as very bothered by nonstandard language use, and (3) the prescriptively correct present tense plural agreeing form there are is perceived as somewhat hyperstandard.

Morphological variability in second language learners: An examination of electrophysiological and production data.

We examined sources of morphological variability in second language (L2) learners of Spanish whose native language (L1) is English, with a focus on L1-L2 similarity, morphological markedness, and knowledge type (receptive vs. expressive). Experiment 1 uses event-related potentials to examine noun-adjective number (present in L1) and gender agreement (absent in L1) in online sentence comprehension (receptive knowledge). For each feature, markedness was manipulated, such that half of the critical noun-adjective combinations were feminine (marked) and the other half were masculine; half were used in the plural (marked) and the other half were used in the singular. With this setup, we examined learners' potential overreliance on unmarked forms or "defaults" (singular/masculine). Experiment 2 examines similar dependencies in spoken sentence production (expressive knowledge). Learners (n = 22) performed better with number than gender overall, but their brain responses to both features were qualitatively native-like (i.e., P600), even though gender was probed with nouns that do not provide strong distributional cues to gender. In addition, variability with gender agreement was better accounted for by lexical (as opposed to syntactic) aspects. Learners showed no advantage for comprehension over production, and no systematic evidence of reliance on morphological defaults, although their online processing was sensitive to markedness in a native-like manner. Overall, these results suggest that there is facilitation for L2 properties that exist in the L1 and that markedness impacts L2 processing, but in a native-like manner. These results also speak against proposals arguing that adult L2ers have deficits at the level of the morphology or the syntax. (PsycINFO Database Record

Marked Nominal Forms in Targum Malachi

The use of formally marked and unmarked nouns varies and has changed in Aramaic dialects throughout the course of history. Until recently, it was assumed that determination in nouns in Targum Prophets was no longer working properly since extant grammars do not point out specific rules of grammar and syntax in this regard. It has been argued that the marked form of the noun came to depose the unmarked form. However, a focused study on Targum Samuel by Renaud Kuty (2010) demonstrates that the retention or abandonment of determinate and indeterminate nominal forms functions according to two linguistic systems in this Targum. This contribution investigates the retention or abandonment of final long A in nominal forms in Targum Malachi by observing how marked and unmarked nominal forms appear in typical grammatical, syntactic, and semantic arrangements, and what the impact of discourse perspective is.

Significance as a lens: Understanding the Mandarin ba construction through discourse adjacent alternation

Given alternative grammatical options, how do native speakers make the choice in a given communicative context? Drawing data from 300 videotaped conversations (100h; one-million words), this study is the first to use a discourse adjacent alternation method to investigate how real-life speakers in a single conversation use alternative grammatical constructions to describe the same event. This study proposes the concept of LENS as a new aspect of linguistic construal. Lens refers to speakers’ subjective evaluation of reality, especially their attitudes toward an event. This study finds that SIGNIFICANCE is a lens that evaluates an event as being highly consequential, challenging, or important. The elusive ba-construction in Mandarin is a linguistic device for the construe of significance: The ba-construction prototypically marks a transitive event as a significant consequence, contribution, or action, which is highly consequential, highly challenging, or highly important. The findings raise questions as to what linguistic devices are used in other languages to construe significance and what devices are used to construe other lenses in Mandarin and in other languages. This study reveals an association of linguistic markedness with discourse-level choices among paradigmatic oppositions in social interaction and suggests that syntactic markedness and semantic complexity correlate with discourse significance. The findings shed light on the pragmatic factors in linguistic choice-making during social interaction.

語音標記性與維漢聲調匹配

抽象 本文以無聲調的維吾爾語和有聲調的漢語的自然接觸作為研究對象，通過田野調查收集維吾爾族人說漢語的第一手材料，以語音標記性差異的視角，觀察、分析維漢自然接觸環境下維吾爾族人學習漢語聲調的具體過程、特點和規律。研究發現，維漢接觸中維吾爾族人以維吾爾語的詞調調型來匹配漢語聲調；隨著維吾爾族人漢化程度的提高，聲調匹配逐步實現由「無序匹配」向「有序匹配」的轉化，這是一個相對緩慢的發展過程，往往要經歷「無聲調意識→有聲調意識→聲調匹配有序化開始→實現聲調有序匹配」等幾個階段；維漢接觸中聲調實現有序匹配需要相當長的時間，是由聲調的標記性高造成的。這一過程可稱為「聲調標記匹配有序化」。

Prefrontal neuromodulation reverses spatial associations of non-numerical sequences, but not numbers

Numerical and non-numerical sequence items interact with spatial responding, pointing towards mental representations that are grounded in space and referred to as SNARC effects (spatial-numerical association of response codes). An ongoing controversy pertains to the universal origin of different SNARC effects and whether their underpinning is a spatial arrangement of cardinal magnitude (mental number line) or a sequential arrangement of ordinal elements in working memory. Recent results from prefrontal neuromodulation with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) were supportive of the unified working memory account. The current tDCS experiment was designed to empirically test the generalizability of the prefrontal modulation effects previously found for numbers in a non-numerical sequence (weekdays) and to examine predictions from the universal account. Participants performed a series of classification tasks with numerical and non-numerical sequences (1–5, Monday–Friday) before and concurrent to a prefrontal stimulation with either anodal (N=24) or cathodal polarity (N=24). Results show a dissociation of SNARC effects for numbers and weekdays by anodal tDCS: Spatial associations of weekdays were reversed by stimulation, when order was relevant for the task, but SNARC effects with number symbols were emphasized in the regular left-to-right direction, corroborating previous results. A control experiment showed that the polarity-dependent neuromodulation effects were absent in order-irrelevant font color classification, supporting the tDCS principle of activity-dependence. We discuss differences in linguistic markedness between temporal and magnitude-related classifications in an integrative account explaining the full pattern. We suggest that stimulation-enhanced psycholinguistic processing can evoke space-number associations whose direction is opposite to cultural visuospatial experience.

Aproximación a los marcadores de género en chino

El trabajo realizado comprende el estudio sobre las formas con las que se marca el género en chino. Empezando por los radicales que denotan el género, se analizan principalmente tres pares de marcadores de género que funcionan como morfema en algunos casos y como nombre en otros:“男/女” (nán/nǚ, hombre/ mujer, masculino/ femenino), “公/母” (gōng/ mŭ, macho/ hembra) y “雌/雄” (cí/xióng, hembra/ macho). Además se centra en la simetría y la asimetría semánticas en el mundo animado y el inanimado, y se llega a la conclusión de que el sexismo lingüístico que se ha detectado en chino es más bien una consecuencia del sexismo social y cultural. Esta presentación de los marcadores de género en chino, por un lado, ayuda la comprensión de los alumnos hispanohablantes de chino a la hora de aprender este idioma; y por otro lado, nos muestra cómo los alumnos chinos de español interpretan lo marcado y lo no marcado en su lengua materna y en qué medida este concepto del género natural va a afectar a la adquisición del género gramatical.

On the assignment of natural gender in Lithuanian as a second language

The present study investigates how beginner adult students of Lithuanian as a foreign language assign natural gender to nouns. The grammatical category of gender is a complex phenomenon which belongs to the domains of syntax, morphology and semantics. As far as this paper is concerned, the assignment of grammatical gender is recognised as an academically challenging task to foreign language learners; however, the issue is still under-researched in the studies of Lithuanian as a foreign language.The aim of this study is to examine whether the beginner adult learners of Lithuanian as a foreign language rely on semantic or morphological clues when assigning natural gender, to identify the difficulties they encounter and the reasons for the difficulties. The paper analyses how learners assign natural gender to the nouns when their morphological and semantic clues conform, how they deal with gender conflict and how they assign indefinite gender to nouns.15 Vilnius University students, who attended courses on Lithuanian as a foreign language, were asked to participate in an experimental task, which consisted of assigning a masculine or feminine pronoun to 50 different nouns. The participants were provided with both morphological form of a noun and its visual representation, i.e. the students were given pictures reflecting a biological sex of the referents. The empirical analysis of the material was based on the method of error analysis.The results of the study have revealed that the beginner learners of Lithuanian as a foreign language tended to rely more on semantic than morphological clues when assigning natural gender. As expected, most errors were made when the learners had to deal with gender conflict. It was also established that the participants of the experimental task performed worse on marked plural forms of nouns than on unmarked singular forms. Finally, it turned out that the learners made more errors when they had to assign gender to unknown nouns, which showed that they had not been prepared to use semantic or morphological clues for the purpose of identifying the gender of unknown words. Since a relatively small number of learners were involved in the study, its insights should be confirmed by further research. The study might be relevant to researchers of foreign language acquisition and foreign language teachers.

Markedness of language signifiers as a gender sensitivity indicator

We are used to perceive the unmarked forms as primary and dominant ones due to their generality and bigger presence within a corpus. That is why we understand them as natural and neutral, while the marked forms are present within a concrete and specific meaning. The use of masculine gender as generic (unmarked) in names of professions is a realisation of dominant social attitudes during the past and of dominant values in a society. Social movements against the discrimination had the tendency of linguistic discrimination effacement as a direct result, especially in English. Related to that, the high number of neologism appears. They find their way to the broader public through the media, while the public is the one who choose whether to accept or reject them. Reasons for this can be intralingual and extra lingual. We can assume that the societies with higher level of socio-economic development will be more sensitive with regard to political correctness in language and that they willrecord a bigger number of specific, marked terms. Although the use of each of them can be accepted by broader public, their use do not necessarily have to be registered in dictionaries. We decided to analyse the corpus of 50 „common“ profession names to see whether the feminine genderforms used by public will be registered in dictionaries. The analysis has shown that Croatian recognises more specific forms for professions and functions in feminine gender in comparison to French in regard to their presence in dictionaries.

Bad-good constraints on a polarity correspondence account for the spatial-numerical association of response codes (SNARC) and markedness association of response codes (MARC) effects.

Performance in numerical classification tasks involving either parity or magnitude judgements is quicker when small numbers are mapped onto a left-sided response and large numbers onto a right-sided response than for the opposite mapping (i.e., the spatial-numerical association of response codes or SNARC effect). Recent research by Gevers et al. [Gevers, W., Santens, S., Dhooge, E., Chen, Q., Van den Bossche, L., Fias, W., & Verguts, T. (2010). Verbal-spatial and visuospatial coding of number-space interactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 139, 180-190] suggests that this effect also arises for vocal "left" and "right" responding, indicating that verbal-spatial coding has a role to play in determining it. Another presumably verbal-based, spatial-numerical mapping phenomenon is the linguistic markedness association of response codes (MARC) effect whereby responding in parity tasks is quicker when odd numbers are mapped onto left-sided responses and even numbers onto right-sided responses. A recent account of both the SNARC and MARC effects is based on the polarity correspondence principle [Proctor, R. W., & Cho, Y. S. (2006). Polarity correspondence: A general principle for performance of speeded binary classification tasks. Psychological Bulletin, 132, 416-442]. This account assumes that stimulus and response alternatives are coded along any number of dimensions in terms of - and + polarities with quicker responding when the polarity codes for the stimulus and the response correspond. In the present study, even-odd parity judgements were made using either "left" and "right" or "bad" and "good" vocal responses. Results indicated that a SNARC effect was indeed present for the former type of vocal responding, providing further evidence for the sufficiency of the verbal-spatial coding account for this effect. However, the decided lack of an analogous SNARC-like effect in the results for the latter type of vocal responding provides an important constraint on the presumed generality of the polarity correspondence account. On the other hand, the presence of robust MARC effects for "bad" and "good" but not "left" and "right" vocal responses is consistent with the view that such effects are due to conceptual associations between semantic codes for odd-even and bad-good (but not necessarily left-right).

Temporalität und die Verwendung von diminuierten Grußformeln wie hallöchen und tschüsschen am Beispiel der gesprochenen Sprache des Ruhrgebiets

This article examines forms of words such as hallochen, tschusschen etc., which are here labelled diminutive greetings, or diminutive formulas of greeting. Research so far has considered greetings with diminutive suffixes mainly from the perspective of the emotional attitude, respectively of the specific expressiveness, which can be associated with the use of diminutive suffixes. However, the semantic contribution of a diminution, respectively of a reduction, does not recede with the diminution of greetings. In fact, we are dealing with the representation of a specific temporality as compared to the unmarked forms. Many substandard constructions enunciate concepts the (written-language) standard German does not have any fixed expressions in store for. The diminutive greeting formulas, unlike the unmarked forms, indicate a reduced time span. The estimated time span - or the time span aimed at - until the communication partners meet again is, with terminal greetings such as tschusschen, indicated to be shorter than with tschuss. Analogously, the time span in which the communication partners plan to conduct a conversation is shorter with initial greetings such as hallochen than with its unmarked equivalent hallo. For the use of diminutive greetings, the speaker’s attitude towards the extralinguistic reality is determining. E. g., whether a reunion does in fact happen to occur extraordinarily early is not decisive in the moment of speech (and a definitive assertion concerning the time of the reunion is impossible anyway). It is rather the subjective assurance that the time until the reunion is going to be short which is relevant. This expression of a “changed temporality” is depicted with the help of empirical evidence of the spoken language of the Ruhr district, which is supplemented with empirical evidence of newspaper articles and enunciations on the internet.

Acquiescence and Resistance in Disconfirming Responses to Polar Questions

Here I examine three forms of disconfirming responses to polar questions in Korean conversation: type-conforming “no” responses, direct nonconforming responses such as repetitions of the question with negation, and nondirect nonconforming responses such as replacements. The use of these forms tends to be different depending on the particular form of question. When questions are in unmarked form with no interrogative endings, indexing a knowing stance, type-conforming responses accept the question and the questioner's epistemic stance. Both direct and nondirect nonconforming responses, by contrast, resist the question's constraints and the knowing stance taken by the questioner. When questions are marked with interrogative endings, encoding an unknowing stance, “no” responses resist the questioner's epistemic stance, treating the matter at hand as already known. Direct nonconforming responses depart from the terms and constraints of the question, whereas nondirect nonconforming responses provide new information addressed to the question's agenda, accepting the questioner's unknowing stance.

The power of imageability: How the acquisition of inflected forms is facilitated in highly imageable verbs and nouns in Czech children

Imageability is the ability of words to elicit mental sensory images of their referents. Recent research has suggested that imageability facilitates the processing and acquisition of inflected word forms. The present study examined whether inflected word forms are acquired earlier in highly imageable words in Czech children. Parents of 317 children (mean age 28 months) were asked whether their child used specific forms of 63 nouns and 35 verbs. For nouns, the forms were nominative singular and plural; for verbs, third person singular present, second person singular present, and the past participle. Plural nouns, and second person and past participle verbs were considered the marked, inflected forms. Analyses revealed that imageability is positively related to the use of the inflected form, even when controlling for the use of the unmarked form in each child, and the inflected form frequency. Two main explanations are suggested: facilitation of form retrieval from long-term memory, or facilitation of inflected form processing, especially by supporting the representations in working memory.

Study on Markedness in Linguistics

Study on Markedness in Linguistics

Small Nominals in Brazilian Portuguese Copular Constructions

The focus of this paper is copular clauses in Brazilian Portuguese like Mulher(es) e complicado, in which the predicate exhibits an unmarked form for gender and number (masculine singular), despite the presence of the feminine and/or plural form of the noun in subject position. We reject the analyses that propose that (i) there is a hidden infinitive clause in the subject position, (ii) the agreement is an instance of semantic agreement, and (iii) the DP subject is in A-bar position, and argue that the subject is a Small Nominal (they are not projected as full DPs) which lacks index features that trigger external agreement (Pereltsvaig 2006).