Markedness

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Markedness referred to Linguistics (Linguistics) the presence of a feature relative to its absence in other language elements, such as words . Initially, the meaning content was developed by the Prague School in the 1920s and referred only to the sub-area of phonology (the function of sounds for the language system). The concept of markedness can also be extended to other areas of linguistics. Nikolai Trubetzkoy , a member of the Prague School, differentiated in 1931 the meanings “bearing features” versus “lacking features” for the members of special phonological oppositions. Roman Jakobson , also a member, transferred the meaning “with features” to “without features” to the morphology (theory of forms) of Russian in 1932 . "Markedness" can also be found in lexicons ( vocabulary ), syntax and language theory.

According to this, a certain phenomenon is unmarked if it appears more natural and is more simply structured. The unmarked form is seen as a basic form, against which other forms stand in contrast in that they are more specialized and only occur under restricted conditions and are referred to as marked .

Such juxtaposition is found in all fields of linguistics, for example, be could Markedness also apply to the case systems. According to the linguist Christian Lehmann , the nominative in German would be unmarked, while the other cases ( genitive , dative and accusative ) would be marked.

One of the big problems for translators, and machine translation in particular, is to translate into a language that has a flagged phenomenon from a language that does not have this phenomenon. Nouns in Finnish or Japanese , for example, have no articles: How do you decide when translating into German whether an article and which one (definite or indefinite) is used?

literature

• Peter Gallmann : Flexion features and markedness. Jena, summer 2016 ( PDF: 144 kB, 10 pages on uni-jena.de).
• Nikolai Sergejewitsch Trubetzkoy : The phonological systems. In: Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague. Volume 4, pp. 96-116.

Web links

Wiktionary: Markedness  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

• Justo Fernández López: Marked vs. unmarked (Marcado vs. no marcado). In: hispanoteca.eu. January 27, 2019.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Nikolai S. Trubetzkoy : The phonological systems. In: Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague. Volume 4, pp. 96-116.
2. ↑ Roman Osipovic Âkobson : On the structure of the Russian verb. Pražsky linguist. Kroužek, Prague 1932.
3. ^ Christian Lehmann : Language theory: Language theory: Markedheit. September 24, 2009, accessed August 10, 2020.