Pragmatic markedness and syntax

Pragmatic Patterns in Child Syntax

Typological Variation of the Adjectival Class: Markedness and Iconicity at the Semantics ⇔ ⇔ ⇔ ⇔ Syntax Interface *

1. Adjectives and parts of speech systems Ask a layperson what they know about grammar and you are likely to get an answer that has something to do with parts of speech; ask a linguist what they know about parts of speech and the answer is quite likely to be much less enlightening. Parts of speech systems or, as I will refer to them here, lexical classes are among the most frequently overlooked...

Degraded Acceptability and Markedness in Syntax, and the Stochastic Interpretation of Optimality Theory∗

Conceiving grammaticality as gradient poses problems for those traditional conceptions of grammar which assume that linguistic expressions can only be either grammatical or ungrammatical. That a sentence is, for instance, “grammatical to 75%” is a nonsensical statement from this point of view. In this tradition, generative grammar assumes the native speaker’s linguistic competence to be the sys...

Optimality Theory, markedness and second language syntax: the case of resumptive pronouns in relative clauses

Eckman, Fred R. 2004. Optimality Theory, markedness and second language syntax: the case of resumptive pronouns in relative clauses. Studies in Phonetics, Phonology and Morphology 10.1. 89–110. This paper proposes a constraint-based analysis for what is arguably the most interesting phenomenon in second language (L2) syntax, the occurrence of an L2 error pattern where the regularity cannot be e...

Morpho-pragmatic Faithfulness Interacts with Phonological Markedness in Appalachian A-prefixing

This paper examines so-called a-prefixing in the speech of dialect speakers living in Appalachia. Building on existing empirical work, and leveraging results from a GoldVarb analysis, I posit the a-prefix realizes a morpho-pragmatic feature which expresses a range of related meanings, including surprise, unexpectedness, and newsworthiness. This range of meanings is encompassed in the linguistic...