The purpose of this essay is to establish the validity of the following four propositions. 1. The assumption that symbolic logic is valid a priori is false, as are the corollaries implicit in this assumption, namely, that symbolic logic is the one and only logic; that it is the logic of effective practical reasoning and action; and, that it is the logic that governs natural language. 2. Typolog...

Phonetic markedness regarding linguistically relevant tonal patterns (Accent 2, boundary tones) in Central Swedish is discussed. Both tonal markedness and F0 turning points are assumed to be important cues for anticipatory attention to grammatical structure during speech processing. Empirical evidence from neurolinguistic and psycholinguistic experiments for the assumed relation between anticip...

This paper first provides an overview of the various senses in which the terms "marked" and "unmarked" have been used in 20th century linguistics. Twelve different senses, related only by family resemblances, are distinguished, grouped into four larger classes: Markedness as complexity, as difficulty, as abnormality, and as a multidimensional correlation. In the second part of the paper, it is ...

Using cross-linguistic evidence from the relationship of epenthetic vowel choice to the vowel system of a given language, this paper proposes a set of context-free markedness constraints on vowel features. Universally ranked constraints yield the result that front vowels are more marked than back and that round vowels are marked; languages may vary in how they rank the markedness of low and non...

This study examines the interacting roles of implicational markedness and frequency from the joint perspectives of formal linguistic theory, phonological acquisition and computational modeling. The hypothesis that child grammars are rankings of universal constraints, as in Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky, 1993/2004), that learning involves a gradual transition from an unmarked initial sta...

When the markedness analysis is extended to the lex ica l and grammatical l eve ls , the question ar ises whether an analogue of the markedness/frequency co r re la t i on , observed in phonology, also exists on these higher l i n g u i s t i c leve ls . This a r t i c l e presents evidence that in some in teres t ing cases, such as tense and aspect forms in English, the cor re la t ion does no...

A considerable body of research has demonstrated that loanwords often pattern differently than native vocabulary with respect to markedness restrictions. Most commonly, clearly “foreign” words observe a subset of the markedness restrictions obeyed by more nativized words (Saciuk 1969, Holden 1976, Paradis & Lebel 1994, Itô & Mester 1995, 1999, 2008, Paradis & LaCharité 1997, Davidson & Noyer 19...

Phonological grammars characterize distinctions between relatively well-formed (unmarked) and relatively ill-formed (marked) phonological structures. We review evidence that markedness influences speech error probabilities. Specifically, although errors result in both unmarked as well as marked structures, there is a markedness asymmetry: errors are more likely to produce unmarked outcomes. We ...

Optimality Theory explains typological markedness implications by proposing that all speakers possess universal constraints penalizing marked structure, irrespective of the evidence provided by their language (Prince & Smolensky, 1993/2004). An account of phonological perception sketched here entails that markedness constraints reveal their presence by inducing perceptual 'repairs' to structure...