[B-Greek] 2COR. 11:1 MOU & AFROSUNHS

Elizabeth Kline kline_dekooning at earthlink.net
Tue Jan 5 02:17:33 EST 2010


On Jan 4, 2010, at 8:03 PM, Elizabeth Kline wrote:

> I wonder if "markedness" is understood in
> exactly the same way by all the players in the linguistic word game.
> Sometimes I get the impression it is not used in the manner you have
> defined it to indicate something abnormal, that is contrary to some
> established pattern. For example a constituent could be marked as the
> topic of a topic focus construction by having a morpheme attached to
> it or by occupying the topic slot in the clause. This sense of marking
> doesn't imply abnormal.

The ambiguity of the term "markedness" as well as the  difference  
between the statistical approach to linguistic marking and the  
presence/absence approach is well explained in David Crystal's  
Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics[1] (4th Ed. 1997 p233-234).



Elizabeth Kline


[1] a google search "falling intonation pattern was unmarked" will  
obtain the middle of this article, page back for the beginning. This  
only works in locations which are "blessed" by Google books and the  
publisher. I have been informed by colleagues in eastern Europe that  
they are not so blessed :-(




More information about the B-Greek mailing list