It has been widely observed in the literature that not only learner varieties but also contact varieties differ in their prosody from the standard variety. The article aims at providing a unified account to the linguistic variation in prosodic focus marking found across learner and contact varieties of the same language, South African English. The notion of markedness allows singling out prosod...

Based on results from psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic research on the perception of word accents in Central Swedish, we argue that Accent 2 could be seen as “marked,” as opposed to the unmarked Accent 1. The markedness of Accent 2 is assumed to be both phonetic, due to its relatively more complex high tone, and cognitive, due to the fact that the Accent 2 tone activates more word forms and...

Virtually all the literature on French Schwa assumes that schwa deletion and epenthesis are categorical phenomena. This paper is an attempt to challenge this traditional view. After reviewing the evidence in favour of the non-categorical nature of (word-final) schwa, we propose a novel account framed within representational Optimality Theory (OT). It is argued that non-categorical schwa emerges...

We consider triggering approaches to language acquisition, or "T-theory." T-theory incorporates a number of significant conceptual paradoxes and empirical puzzles. We suggest that a different type of theory, "adaptation-theory" (A-theory), may avoid these paradoxes and puzzles. We sketch out a dynamical systems approach to language acquisition and representation. A-theory crucially incorporates...

(1) a. Inflectional paradigms aspire to “avoid homophony”. The Russian nominative singular and genitive plural endings reflect a transderivational attempt to minimize homophony across inflectional endings. b. Inflectional paradigms require transderivational reference: one cannot compute the Russian genitive plural without knowing what the nominative singular ending is. c. Markedness-based neutr...

The meter of Greek lyric poetry shows great variation within and between lines regarding the shape, number and combinations of basic metrical units. We offer a simplifying analysis in terms of markedness, in which meters are defined by distinctive violations of linguistic constraints controlling rhythm, layering, binarity, and alignment. The constraints that are distinctively violated in meter ...