Markedness: diagnostics and structure
Plan for today
- Markedness as a structural property
- Universalizing markedness
- Markedness in SPE
- Diagnosing markedness
- How universal is markedness?
Markedness: the beginning
Classification of oppositions
Trubetzkoy (1939): three kinds of phonological oppositions
- Privative
-
Presence of a property vs. its absence. Example: nasal vs. non-nasal
- Equipollent
-
Presence of a property vs. the presence of a mutually exclusive property. Example: labial vs. dorsal
- Gradual
-
What it says on the tin. Example: vowel height
The ‘mark’
In a privative opposition, one member is characterized by the presence of a ‘mark’ (Merkmal) and the other is characterized by its absence.
Important
This is a statement about the ‘logical structure of the opposition’, not the phonetics of it
In general, the presence of structure corresponds to more information relative to its absence.
Diagnosing markedness
- How would we know that a phoneme bears a mark? By its behaviour
- Some criteria:
- Implicational relationships in inventories
- Marked items are dispreferred in neutralization positions
- Greater token frequency of the unmarked1
Universalizing markedness
Markedness beyond the mark
Does it even mean anything?
Markedness: An abstract measure of how unusual a particular linguistic structure is (Samuels 2011:208)
OK, that was bit mean
Hume (2011):
- Descriptive markedness:
-
An abstract relation holding over members of a set of observations displaying asymmetry, such that one subset is unmarked and the other is marked
- Theoretical markedness
-
A universal principle or law that guides language acquisition, loss, inventory structure, processes, rules, etc. toward the ‘unmarked’ form
- Markedness constraints
-
A technical term in Optimality Theory referring to a category of constraints that evaluate the well-formedness of output structures
Could you be more specific?
| Marked | Unmarked |
|---|---|
| less natural | more natural |
| more complex | simpler |
| more specific | more general |
| less common | more common |
| unexpected | expected |
| not basic | basic |
| less stable | stable |
| appear in few grammars | appear in more grammars |
| later in acquisition | earlier in acquisition |
| early loss in language deficit | late loss in language deficit |
| implies unmarked feature | implied by marked feature |
| harder to articulate | easier to articulate |
| perceptually more salient | perceptually less salient |
| smaller phonetic space | larger phonetic space |
Markedness in phonology: further developments
Markedness in SPE
Chapter 9
Markedness diagnostics
Or, what is it that are we trying to explain again? (Rice 2007)
- Emergence of the unmarked:
-
Neutralization
- Submergence of the unmarked:
-
Unmarked elements are preferred targets, dispreferred triggers
- Preservation of the marked
-
Marked elements are dispreferred targets, preferred triggers
- Transparency and blocking
-
In long-distance processes, unmarked elements are transparent, marked elements are blockers
A closer look at the diagnostics
Typical reasoning: unmarked coronals
- English assimilation: coronals undergo, non-coronals resist
- ba[ŋ] cuts but *alar[ŋ] clock
- Korean: coronals undergo and do not trigger
- /kot-palo/ → [koppalo]
- /pap-to/ → [papto], *[patto]
- /ip-ko/ → [ikko]
- Northern Sámi: place neutralization word-finally
| GEN.SG | NOM.SG | Gloss |
|---|---|---|
| rusttega | rusttet | ‘building’ |
| ustiba | ustit | ‘friend’ |
| rievssaha | rievssat | ‘ptarmigan’ |
| goaskima | goaskin | ‘eagle’ |
| čálána | čálán | ‘writer’ |
Emergence of the unmarked
Warning
This sense of ‘emergence of the unmarked’ is quite different from TETU as understood in OT
In non-assimilatory neutralization, outcomes tend to be unmarked
- Final obstruent devoicing
- Vowel reduction:
- Centripetal to schwa (= minimally marked vowel)
- Centrifugal to [i u (a/ə)] (= relatively unmarked1 inventory)
- Coda weakening
Other criteria
- Default vowel epenthesis
- Default consonant epenthesis
So, what is the unmarked place?
| Inventory | Examples | |
|---|---|---|
| Stops | /p/ | Godoberi, Lhasa Tibetan, Nimburan |
| /t/ | Finnish, Eastern Enontekiö Northern Sámi | |
| /k/ | Karasjok Northern Sámi, Ecuador Quechua (but also /n/) | |
| /ʔ/ | many | |
| Nasals | /m/ | Lhasa Tibetan, Sentani… |
| /n/ | Finnish, Koyukon, Sekani… | |
| /ŋ/ | tricky one! |
| Inventory | Examples | |
|---|---|---|
| Stops | /p t/ | Kiowa |
| /p k/ | German dialects, Korowai… | |
| /t k/ | Nanchang, Badimaya… | |
| /p ʔ/ | Jabêm | |
| /k ʔ/ | Yaw Burmese | |
| Nasals | /m n/ | Trio, Sonora Hiaki… |
| /m ŋ/ | Nganasan, Palauan… | |
| /n ŋ/ | various Sinitic |
Coda neutralization in alternations
| Infinitive | 3SG.PST | Gloss |
|---|---|---|
| lapma | labana | ‘seize’ |
| apma | abana | ‘come’ |
| jokma | joɡana | ‘search’ |
| pʰaʔma | pʰatana | ‘help’ |
| keʔma | ketana | ‘bring up’ |
| liʔma | litana | ‘plant’ |
| tʰuʔma | tʰurana | ‘sew’ |
| poʔma | porana | ‘topple’ |
- Preservation of the marked: /p k/ → [p k]
- Submergence of the unmarked: /t r/ → [ʔ]
- A markedness hierarchy
-
labial » dorsal » coronal » glottal
- The coda inventory
-
labial = dorsal »
coronal» glottal
Preservation of the marked
- Nganasan
- /koðaʔa-t/ \(\rightarrow\) [koðaʔaʔ] ‘they kill’
- /koðaʔa-t-uŋ/ \(\rightarrow\) [koðaʔaðuŋ] ‘they kill (it)’
- /tapkətə/ \(\rightarrow\) [tapkətə] ‘from there’
/t d/ \(\rightarrow\) [ʔ] in codas, but /p b/ are preserved
Submergence of the unmarked
- Assimilation: English and Korean above
- Modern Greek: front vowels are deleted in hiatus irrespective of the order
Transparency
| ATR | RTR | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| òɡùrò | ‘spurtle’ | ɔrúkɔ | ‘name’ |
| eúrò | ‘bitter-leaf’ | ɛ̀lùbɔ́ | ‘yam flour’ |
| oríwo | ‘boil, tumour’ | ɔdídɛ | ‘parrot’ |
| èbúté | ‘harbour’ | ɛúrɛ́ | ‘goat’ |
Blocking
| Place | Gloss | |
|---|---|---|
| Laryngeal | mihiˈla | ‘west’ |
| weˈʔej | ‘yonder’ | |
| waʔali | ‘cane’ | |
| soʔhoj | ‘seal’ | |
| huˈʔul | ‘a while ago’ | |
| Supraralaryngeal | biʔdu | ‘acorn’ |
| hoja | ‘scoring sticks’ | |
| kʼaʔli | ‘between’ | |
| hoˈpʰune | ‘white-footed mouse’ |
Encoding markedness
Back to the ‘mark’
- In the SPE system, the difference between ‘marked’ and ‘unmarked’ is stipulated by markedness conventions, and justified by appeal to substance
- There is no clear link between how markedness is represented and what kinds of behaviour it is associated with
- Recall that in Praguian phonology markedness was defined in terms of size or complexity
- Marked = merkmaltragend
Markedness and size
A hypothesis
What traditional markedness diagnostics are picking up is the presence of structure
A corollary
Segments consist not of feature-value bundles but of unary features
The coda condition: Japanese
- Option 1: first half of a geminate
- gakkoo ‘school’
- tossa ‘impulsively’
- kappa ‘legendary being’
- NB! Enforced by alternation
- /bet+kaku/ → [bekkakɯ] ‘different style’
- Option 2: the nasal
- Weak nasal prepausally: [hoN] ‘book’
- Place assimilation before a consonant: [hoŋ ka] ‘book-Q’
- Assimilated glide before a vowel: [hoĩ irɯ], [hoõ o], [hoɯ̃ arɯ]
‘More marked’ means ‘bigger’
- Coda conditions
- Final/coda devoicing
- Vowel epenthesis
- Vowel reduction
- Centripetal: remove place specifications
- Centrifugal: remove more complex specifications
- Raising: remove |open|
- Implicational universals in inventories
‘Bigger’ means more phonologically active
- Assimilation triggers
- Harmony triggers
- Harmony blockers
‘Smaller’ means less phonologically active
- Assimilation non-triggers
- Assimilation targets
- Transparent segments in harmony
Some challenges
- Equal in markedness = equal in size?
- What about contextual markedness?
- Where does structure come from?