Marked and Unmarked Word Pairs
In terms of lexical opposites, marked form is a non-basic, often one with inflectional or derivational endings. Thus, a morphologically negative word form is marked as opposed to a positive one: happy/unhappy, honest/dishonest, fair/unfair, clean/unclean and so forth. Similarly, unaffixed masculine or singular forms are taken to be unmarked in contrast to affixed feminine or plural forms: lion/lioness, host/hostess, automobile/automobiles, child/children. An unmarked form is also a default form. For example, the unmarked lion can refer to a male or female, while lioness is marked because it can refer only to females.
The default nature allows unmarked lexical forms to be identified even when the opposites are not morphologically related. In the pairs old/young, big/little, happy/sad, clean/dirty, the first term of each pair is taken as unmarked because it occurs generally in questions. For example, English speakers typically ask how old (big, happy, clean) … something or someone is. To use the marked term presupposes youth, smallness, unhappiness, or dirtiness.
Read more about this topic: Markedness
Famous quotes containing the words marked, unmarked and/or word:
“In every particular state of the world, those nations which are strongest tend to prevail over the others; and in certain marked peculiarities the strongest tend to be the best.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“In the labyrinth of a difficult text, we find unmarked forks in the path, detours, blind alleys, loops that deliver us back to our point of entry, and finally the monster who whispers an unintelligible truth in our ears.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The State’s your mother, your father, the totality of your interests. No discipline can be too severe for the man that denies that by word or deed.”
—H.G. (Herbert George)