Overview

Theories of language espoused by linguists during much of this century have assumed that there is a hierarchy to the elements of language such that certain constructions, rules, and features are unmarked while others are marked; ""play"" for example, is unmarked or neutral, while ""played"" or ""player"" is marked. This opposition, referred to as markedness, is one of the concepts which both Chomskyan generative grammar and Jakobsonian structuralism appear to share, yet which each tradition has treated differently. Battistella studies the historical development of the concept of markedness in the Prague School structuralism of Roman Jakobson, its importation into generative linguistics, and its subsequent development within Chomsky's ""principles and parameters"" framework. He traces how structuralist and generative linguistics have drawn on and expanded the notion of markedness, both as a means of characterizing linguistic constructs and as a theory of the innate language faculty.

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9780195103946

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<br> The Logic of Markedness is a good book to have around; it provides historical grounding for the concepts disclosed, placing them in a large, theoretical setting. --English Language Notes<p><br>

The Logic of Markedness is a good book to have around; it provides historical grounding for the concepts disclosed, placing them in a large, theoretical setting. --English Language Notes<br>

informative, interesting and generally reader-friendly book ... The strongest aspects of this thought-provoking and very valuable book are the extreme richness of the sample of markedness literature that is surveyed ... the concise and clear summaries of individual bits of research; the insightful syntheses of relevant work from divergent fields ... and the novel application of markedness to the use of the English genitive markers, name formats, and punctuation marks. Journal of Linguistics

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