Markedness

Edwin L. Battistella is Associate Professor of English and Linguistics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

"This work cuts across a large number of theoretical positions and shows how markedness interacts with them. Battistella integrates a great deal of material including new theories of language organization brought into comparison and relationship with older theories in insightful ways." — Margaret E. Winters, Southern Illinois University

• Preface Permissions Acknowledgments 1. Prolegomenon to a Theory of Markedness MarkednessRoman Jakobson: Linguista sum: linguistici nihil a me alienum putoThe Mystery of the Word: Opposition and FeatureThe System of Language: Duality of Patterning and Hierarchization of Structure 2. On Markedness Toward a Theory of MarkednessMarkedness and Markedness ValuesSemantic Markedness: Nonequivalence of SignifiedsFormal Marking and DistributionSyncretizationPrototypes and Best ExamplesSummary: Diagnostics of the Breadth of MeaningPhonological MarkednessThe Phonological Features and Markedness Reversals in PhonologyMarkedness Reversals in SemanticsSyntactic MarkednessA Theory of Markedness 3. Markedness Principles and the Values of Grammatical Categories Introduction: The Alignment of Units and ContextsCase OppositionsNominative and Objective CasesThe GenitiveElliptical ContextsZero-Objective and Zero-Nominative PronounsReflexive versus Personal PronounsSingular and Plural in the Pronominal System: The Markedness of Singular PronounsPerson, Gender, and AnimacySummary: Values, Assimilation, and Form-Content AlignmentThe Verbal Categories: An IntroductionForm Categories of the VerbSemantics of the Verbal CategoriesFinite Indicative VerbsVerbal AspectThe ProgressiveMood DistinctionsFiniteness and VoiceWord OrderThe Complementarity of Form and ContentSummary: Determining Values and Finding Principles 4. Phonology, Morphology, and Morphophonemics The Markedness Values of Phonological FeaturesMarkedness Values of the English ConsonantsThe Markedness Assignments of Vowels and GlidesMarked and Unmarked Features in English Syllable Onsets and CodasSound-Meaning Diagrammatization in Morphology and MorphophonemicsUniversality RevisitedConcluding Remarks in Markedness Patterns 5. Markedness and Language Change Markedness in Theories of Language ChangeLaws of Synchrony and DiachronySyntactic Naturalness as ComplexityPhonotactic Change as UnmarkingThe Tendency Not to Accumulate MarksMarkedness Diagrams as a Goal of ChangeThe Shifting of Second Person Pronoun FormsThe Direction of Change 6. Retrospective and Prospectus A Look BackWider HorizonsRight and Left in Symbol ClassificationThe GreeksThe KaguruThe NyoroMarkedness Assimilation in Symbol ClassificationInversionsA Few Final Examples Notes Bibliography Name Index Subject Index