Johns Hopkins University – Homewood Campus – (410-516-5250/office phone)
Thursday, October 19, 2006
3:45 p.m.
Rutgers University
“Accounting for the asymmetries of human language: Competence Markedness vs. other markednesses”
Markedness has been (and still is) central to understanding human language. 'Markedness' refers to asymmetries in language processes. For example, very few languages lack a [t] while many lack a [k]; if a language has an epenthetic consonant, it will be glottal stop, [t], a glide, or [h] - the vast majority of consonants are never epenthetic. Other examples - both phonological and syntactic - abound. Many mutually incompatible taxonomic and theoretical approaches have influenced current conceptions of markedness. The result is a heterogenous group of formally unrelated processes. Unfortunately, it is still commonly believed that there is a canon of markedness-related processes, and this canon influences the evaluation of theories of the human language faculty. Consequently, the aim of this talk is to identify those processes that are due to the structure of the human language faculty, and those that are not.
Some background reading:
de Lacy, Paul (2006). Markedness: Reduction and preservation in phonology. Cambridge University Press. [esp. ch.1]. Kingston, John and Paul de Lacy (2006). Synchronic explanation. Ms., UMass & Rutgers.
Download: http://ling.rutgers.edu/~delacy/work%20in%20progress/Kingston-de%20Lacy-rv10.pdf
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