Markedness, Marking, Markers

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Marking

Marking refers to changing form, and usually refers to the results of wider and regular systems of such change (such as inflection)

It need not be morphological; e.g. you can say that the use and choice of of articles (e.g. the, a) mark an object.

The term Marker usually refers to specific morphemes commonly used in morphemic marking. For example, in English the 's' as a suffix tends to mark plural form.

See also Modification.

Markedness

✎ This article/section is a stub — some half-sorted notes, not necessarily checked, not necessarily correct. Feel free to ignore, or tell me about it.

Confusingly, marked forms can refer to markedness instead.

Markedness refers to a comparison linguistic behaviour as being more irregular or just more specific than another (perhaps originating in being 'markedly different'?(verify)).

in a sense of just being more specific

e.g. honest (unmarked) vs. dishonest (marked),

often opposition, but not necessarily

be it in the sense of standing out (somewhat related to the idea of idiomacity)

in the sense that the choice draws attention to itself

or, sometimes, that it's the wrong choice

in a sense of one being low-effort

in a sense of just being the typical way something is worded

in English, you ask how old someone is, not how young someone is. The first is neutral because it is common, and the second draws attention and seems to presuppose someone is young.

'unusual' can be a broad term - you could even argue that one aspect of institutionalized phrases is that that combination of words appear with markedly (i.e. unusually) high frequency