Australian Journal of Linguistics

Vol. 11, no. 2 (1991)

Articles

Markedness, markedness inversion, and dependency phonology	W. Scott Allan & Laurie Bauer	151-174
Transitivity and reflexivity in Samoan	Ulrike Mosel	175-194
Korean relative clause constructions: Conspiracy and pragmatics	Jae Jung Song	195-220

Bibliography: Publications on Australian languages, 1990 Harold Koch & Geraldine Triffitt 221-227

Book reviews

Metaphors of anger, pride and love: A lexical approach to the structure of concepts (Zoltán Kövecses)	Bert Peeters	229-232
New Zealand ways of speaking English (A. Bell & J. Holmes, editors)	David Bradley	232-236
You just don't understand: Women and men in conversation (Deborah Tannen)	Miriam Meyerhoff	236-241
Lexical-Functional Grammar (George M. Horn) and Essentials of Functional Grammar: A structure-neutral theory of movement, control, and anaphora (George Horn)	Jane Simpson	241-244

Shorter notices

The Wordtree: A transitive cladistic for solving physical and social problems (Henry G. Burger)	Nick Evans	245-247
Theory and practice in corpus linguistics (J. Aarts & W. Meijs, editors)	Peter Collins	247-249

Abstracts

Markedness, markedness inversion, and dependency phonology

W. Scott Allan & Laurie Bauer

Abstract: One of the basic assumptions of dependency phonology is that the notation should encode the markedness values of segments, systems, and processes. Both the marking conventions and 'u' and 'm' values are dispensed with, and markedness values are reflected in the complexity of representation assigned to a segment, system or process. For example, more frequent, and therefore less marked, segments should have less complex representations, and vice versa. While it would appear that the dependency notation does succeed in encoding markedness values, data from articulatory phonetics, acquisition and typological studies discussed in this article suggest that it can only do so in a superficial fashion. It appears from these studies that there is a correlation between place and manner of articulation in terms of markedness. At a marked place of articulation, for example palatal, the unmarked manner of articulation is glide, which is itself marked at the less marked places of articulation, for example denti-alveolar. This reversal of markedness can be accounted for by markedness inversion, which claims that markedness values are inverted in more marked situations. However, markedness inversion cannot be easily assimilated into the dependency approach.

Last update: 3 May 2000
Comments to Tim Curnow