Coding Episode Boundaries with Marked Structures: A Cross-Linguistic Study

Abstract

The notion of markedness has played an important role in linguistic theorizing for decades. Originating in Prague School phonological theory, it has also found an important place in morphology, syntax, and semantics (Andersen 1989). In general terms, markedness theory claims that when alternative forms are available, such as alternative construction types or paraphrases, one member of the set, the unmarked member, is more prototypical, is more frequent, has a wider distribution, etc. Within the psycholinguistic literature, it has been argued that the unmarked member of a set will typically be both cognitively and structurally less complex, and hence easier to process than its marked counterpart, a factor which also suggests that, all things being equal, the unmarked member should be acquired earlier than the marked member (e.g., Slobin 1973).

Semantic agents, syntactic subjects, and discourse topics

“…'their being inside that whale [was] three days') (Hess 1993a: 175-6, lines 6-13) The speaker here makes use of a strategy of linking rhematic information to thematic material that he has previously located for the speaker in discourse space -specifically, a topical participant (or participants) which acts as the syntactic subject, although this participant is often elided. Because any discourse episode requires a topic, the story begins with a topic-setting structure (Pu & Prideaux 1994) -in this case, a nominally-predicated sentence, (31a), that identifies the topical element to which subsequent text is linked in discourse. This is illustrated in (32) …”