ORLAPUBS P. L50: EVIDENCE FOR MARKED ENVIRONMENTS

Evidence for marked environments comes from various sources, but chiefly from implicationalities (what implies something else is the more marked of the two; what is implied by everything else relevant is least marked--most unmarked) and from reversals. It is the latter that will be most under scrutiny here. The implicationalities are created by time or development. Unless predictable re-orderings occur or reversals in marked categories or environments take place, later-developed phenomena imply earlier phenomena; of course, if an earlier phenomenon is replaced or otherwise deleted in every lect of the panlectal system, this principle will become otiose in that instance. Notice that the principle of what is unmarked (default) or marked (see the writer's Essays on time-based linguistic analysis [Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 314] is caused by time, not by relative frequencies and so on (see "frequencies" and "freakwencies" in the index to the volume just referred to). If this is its explanation, it is also, like any theory, predictive. It predicts that many grammatical errors as well as slips of the tongue will be less marked than the prevailing usage. When someone says "They was busy" or "If it was ready now," the less-marked third-person singular form replaces were--which is more marked in the first example, where a plural verb is required, and marked marked in the second example--as a (now optional) markering of the markedness of counterfactual clauses. (Note that was is incorrect in "Were it ready now, . . . "--which is more marked in terms of subject-verb order than "If it were/was ready now, . . . ) Conditionals are also sufficiently marked to reverse the unmarked syntactic order of most subordinate clauses: Whereas the unmarked ordering of most subordinate clauses is to follow the main clauses they are subordinate to, the unmarked order of a conditional clause is to precede the main, contingency clause. It does not seem to produce an additional effect on the use of was for were to say or write the conditional clause in a marked order (following the main, contingency clause): "They'd be happier if it were/was ready now."

Note that Tweety Bird's "I tought I taw a putty tak" has unmarked consonantism. The change of "t" to "d" in little is an unmarking due to intervocalic assimilation--a reversing situation. But liklik "little" in Pacific daughter-languages of English is due to the unmarked status of post-nuclear velars ("k" here) in place of "t" (which is unmarked in licked). Some Caribbean daughter-languages of English keep the "k" in likkle when they recover the full form of the English word. (Although "tt/k" are syllable final in English, "k" is syllable-final in most daughter-languages of English and among young children in English-speaking households. Note that "t" becomes an even more unmarked syllable-final fricative in some Irish varieties_of English.

There is a lot of evidence--so much that it can be recalled over time as this page is built up--for reversals in the following syntactic environments (on the left) and the category environments (on the right):

VERB MODALITY	Negation Interrogation Comparison Surrealis**	Anterior Exochronous Posterior
PERSONAL PRONOUN	Unconjoined non-subject Any conjoined personal pronoun Directly preceding a rela- tive clause or other modifier/appositive

*Each marking reverses the situation of one-less-marking; thus, a doubly marked category or context is like an unmarked one. See C.-J. N. Bailey, Essays on time-based linguistic analylsis (Oxford University Press, 1996), esp. Chh. 5-6.
**The following subordinate clauses, when embedded in a marked (posterior or infinitive) construct: Conditional and irrealis concessive, temporal (when, before, after, as, as soon as, while, until, once), and relative and whoever/whatever nominal clauses. (Causal and non-irrealis concessive clauses are not included.)

Only brief mention will be made of the fact that a doubly-marked exochronous-anterior or past-anterior or posterior-anterior modality can talk a definite time, whereas a singly-marked present-anterior cannot take a definite time.

The many forms of questions and their reversals are dealt with in the writer's "What makes .............?" and "How . . . grammars are missing the boat," as also are pronominal reversals. Verb-modality reversals are dealt with in Essays on time-based linguistic analysis--the chapters referred to in the first not following the table. The same is true of the complex but completely symmetrical reversals of until (till) and by. Many other examples in the author's writings will be added as the information comes back to him from time to time. For now, the following example is of no little interest:

Dozens of oddities of this sort attest to the markedness of the categories in question.

Those who correct a speaker for saying "They did it fast" do not understand English. Intensifiers like very (contrast the manner adverb verily) do not usually add -ly. Some do: Exceeding was without -ly formerly but now adds it. The reason it is not contradictory to say right incorrect or "right to the left," pretty ugly, jolly sad, real unreal, hardly soft, "clear out of sight," and so on--where the adverbs with -ly would sound silly or else have a different, manner-adverb sense. Try "rightly out of sight" or, instead of "right on" or "right friendly," "rightly on" and "rightly friendly." The reason is that the forms with -ly are not manner adverbs. We say, "They worked hard/fast"; -ly on these intensifiers would sound bizarre. Compared manner adverbs are also marked and do not take -ly unless they are further marked and further "reversed" by modifying adjectives that modify nouns; thus, we say, "He finished up quicker than you did" but use -ly in "the more quickly completed [or quicker-completed] portrait" and "the paper more quickly completed because of the rush to get it reader for the symposion." We say intensifier much and the superlative most; note that superlatives are a kind of subclass of intensifiers, as are absolute adverbs like left and right (which, when directionals, are not amenable to comparison). What then is mostly--a manner adverb? Yes, it means "predominantly" or "mainly" and is extra-marked or over-marked, and therefore doubly "reversed," because in addition to being a superlative it is a manner adverb rather than the expected (unmarked or default) intensifier.

Note that compared adjectives and adverbs have got to be replaced with (or reversed to) "analytical" formations with more in certain marked contexts--typically where adverbs are contrasted or otherwise juxtaposed. We don't say "cleaner than dirtier" but "more clean than dirty"--where more modifies the entire phrase that follows. A perhaps more telling example is "she is more intelligent, more well-adjusted and happy, and more competent" than the others; happier would be un-English here, as it would also be if we omit well-adjusted and--cf. "more intelligent, more happy, more motivated, and more competent."

Rhetorical or reclamatory reversals allow constructs not allowed in an unmarked environment. Thus, we cannot say "From where?" in an ordinary question, but we can say it in a doubly-marked non-limiting relative clause like "He went to Maui, from where he flew to Atlanta" and in a reclamatory question like "From where?" expressing surprise or some other marked force following "He got it from Liberty House." An example from Bolinger is given in the first chapter of Essays: One would ordinarily say "What on?" if coming to someone's apparent an offered a choice of Japanese tatami mats and a pune'e (sp); but if the room were empty, one would say, "On what?@"