Unmarked and Markedness
According to UG there are certain innate
principles in human mind, by which a child gradually develops its language. The
principles that are universal and most common are known as core grammar and the
uncommon rules are known as the periphery. But the core grammar is unmarked.
Related to the concepts of core and periphery is Chomsky’s
theory of markedness .Core rules are unmarked ,that is, they accord with the
general tendencies of language .Periphery rules are marked ;that is, they are
exceptional in some way.Thus ,the adjectives big,long,and fast are unmarked in
relation to small,short,and slow,because they occur in both declarative and interrogative
sentences ,while the latter occur only in the declarative sentences.
UG is maximally relevant to the core elements
that can be described through its principles and parameters ,such as Binding
Theory and pro-drop, minimally relevant to other aspects of language such as
constructions ’the more the merrier’.The elements that do not fit into the
system of UG are considered as peripheral. Outside the core grammar, the set of
"peripheral" or marked properties of a language include exceptions or
relaxations of the settings of core grammar and the idiosyncratic features of
the language governed by particular lexical items.
The principles and the parameters are not aquired
from outside since they are already present as part of our UG inside the
mind.The principles and parameters are not itself sufficient to create
language.They have to be ’triggered ’ by something in the language input the
child hears.This is seen predominantly as caused by positive evidence-things
that actually present in the input.So,the word order parameters for
English(SVO) may be triggered by hearing sentence such ’Lucy reads a book”.The
role of language input is therefore to trigger the appropriate setting for each
parameter.So,the setting for the parameters is a must. There might be no
initial setting, so a child who begins to learn a language can adopt any
setting with equal ease. Or there might be a default setting consisting of one
or other of the possible settings. Two possible settings are non-pro-drop and
pro-drop settings.
Setting can be of two kinds namely initial
default setting and the learnt setting called ’markedness’.The initial setting
is said to be the unmarked setting;the setting that can be learnt through
experience is marked.
