The wide empirical coverage of two number features, [±singular] and [±augmented], is used to show that (Greenbergian) category-internal markedness, (geometric) feature markedness, and value markedness are, respectively, epiphenomenal, untenable, and too simplistically formulated to be currently evaluated.

Hume, Elizabeth. 2003. Language Specific Markedness: The Case of Place of Articulation. Studies in Phonetics, Phonology and Morphology. In this paper I draw on evidence from familiar criteria for diagnosing markedness values to argue that markedness is best determined on a language specific basis. I will further conclude that markedness considerations do not provide compelling evidence for cons...

Antonym pair members can be differentiated by each word's markedness-that distinction attributable to the presence or absence of features at morphological or semantic levels. Morphologically marked words incorporate their unmarked counterpart with additional morphs (e.g., "unlucky" vs. "lucky"); properties used to determine semantically marked words (e.g., "short" vs. "long") are less clearly d...

ing from these minor conceptual difficulties, however, the markedness hierarchy established so far corresponds to the ‘consensus hierarchy’ that was proposed in Sect. 2.1.4.1 as a generalization over different hierarchies of referring expressions found in linguistic literature. Correspondingly, hierarchies of referring expressions as discussed in Sect. 2.1.2 can be interpreted as markedness hie...

In this paper, I explore the possibility of typologizing two-height tone systems based on markedness. Drawing from a current database of 650 tone systems (of which over 400 are twoheight), I will first confirm that two-height systems may be “equipollent” /H, L/, “privative” /H/ or /L/ vs. Ø — or both, /H, L/ vs. Ø. I demonstrate that “markedness as faithfulness” (Pulleyblank 2004) and “faithful...

The markedness constraints of classic Optimality Theory assign violation-marks to output candidates without reference to the input or to other candidates. This article explores an alternative conception of markedness: markedness constraints compare the candidate under evaluation with another candidate, the most faithful one. Comparative constraints distinguish two situations: the candidate unde...

Phonological markedness and allomorph selection in Zahao Moira Yip University College London This paper deals with verb stem alternations involving tone, glottalization, and length in the Chin language Zahao (Osburne 1975), spoken in Burma. The emphasis is on tone, but the length facts are extremely interesting, and are given a preliminary treatment in the final section. It is argued that verbs...

A common view in the phonological literature is that phonological alternations typically involve markedness reduction; that is, deviation from an input is basically characterized as a repair of a marked structure. Under the most extreme version of phonological theory, every output constraint is simply a reflection of a markedness hierarchy, meaning that all disparities between inputs and output...