Markedness and

word order
The notion of markedness
▪ In languages, the theory is that some features are simple and
prototypical so they are referred to as unmarked but others
are distinguished or marked in some way. For example, we do
not usually suggest that house is the singular of houses but
rather that houses is the plural of house. The plural form is
marked (in this case by the '-s' suffix) but the singular is
unmarked. That is the normal way plurals are formed in English.

2
Twelve senses of "markedness" and
typical uses
▪ Since it was first proposed by Nicholay Trubetzkoy and
Roman Jakobson in the 1930s, the term "markedness" has
been very popular in linguistics. It was embraced by European
structuralists, generative phonology, functional typological
linguistics, Chomskyan principles-and-parameters syntax, neo
Gricean pragmatics, optimality theory, first and second language
acquisition, creole studies, and probably other research areas as
well.
4
12. Markedness as a
multidimensional correlation
▪ "The singular is more marked than the
plural, and the plural is more marked
than the dual."
Thanks!