'Markedness' is a central notion in linguistic theory. This book is the first to provide a comprehensive survey of markedness relations across various grammatical categories, in a sample of closely-related speech varieties. It is based on a sample of over 100 dialects of Romani, collected and processed via the Romani Morpho-Syntax (RMS) Database - a comparative grammatical outline in electronic form, constructed by the authors between 2000-2004. Romani dialects provide an exciting sample of language change phenomena: they are oral languages, which have been separated and dispersed from some six centuries, and are strongly shaped by the influence of diverse contact languages. The book takes a typological approach to markedness, viewing it as a hierarchy among values that is conditioned by conceptual and cognitive universals. But it introduces a functional-pragmatic notion of markedness, as a grammaticalised strategy employed in order to priositise information. In what is referred to as 'dynamic', such prioritisation is influenced by an interplay of factors: the values within a category and the conceptual notions that they represent, the grammatical structure onto which the category values are mapped, and the kind of strategy that is applied in order to prioritise certain value. Consequently, the book contains a thorough survey of some 20 categories (e.g Person, Number, Gender, and so on) and their formal representation in various grammatical structures across the sample. The various accepted criteria for markedness (e.g. Complexity, Differentiation, Erosion, and so on) are examined systematically in relation to the values of each and every category, for each relevant structure. The outcome is a novel picture of how different markedness criteria may cluster for certain categories, giving a concrete reality to the hitherto rather vague notion of markedness. Borrowing and its relation to markedness is also examined, offering new insights into the motivations behind contact-induced change.

Biographical note: Viktor Elšik teaches at the Univerzita Karlova, Prague, Czech Republic. Yaron Matras is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Manchester, UK.

Battistella traces the development of markedness theory as a central part of structuralist theories of language. He outlines the concepts of marked and unmarked from Prague School structuralism to present day applications in linguistic theory and cultural analysis, using the reference point of English grammar and sound structure. The author focuses on the fundamental asymmetry between terms of linguistic relationships, in which one term is more broadly defined and hence dominant (the unmarked term) while the other is more narrowly defined (the marked term). In addition to examining language-particular markedness relations evident in the structure and history of English, Battistella raises questions concerning universal asymmetries as well. He discusses the status of markedness as a unifying concept of linguistic structure and as a principle of language change.

Change is an inherent feature of all aspects of language, and syntax is no exception. While the synchronic study of syntax allows us to make discoveries about the nature of syntactic structure, the study of historical syntax offers even greater possibilities. Over recent decades, the study of historical syntax has proven to be a powerful scientific tool of enquiry with which to challenge and reassess hypotheses and ideas about the nature of syntactic structure which go beyond the observed limits of the study of the synchronic syntax of individual languages or language families. In this timely Handbook, the editors bring together the best of recent international scholarship on historical syntax. Each chapter is focused on a theme rather than an individual language, allowing readers to discover how systematic descriptions of historical data can profitably inform and challenge highly diverse sets of theoretical assumptions.

'Markedness' refers to the tendency of languages to show a preference for particular structures or sounds. This bias towards 'marked' elements is consistent within and across languages, and tells us a great deal about what languages can and cannot do. This pioneering study presents a groundbreaking theory of markedness in phonology. De Lacy argues that markedness is part of our linguistic competence, and is determined by three conflicting mechanisms in the brain: (a) pressure to preserve marked sounds ('preservation'), (b) pressure to turn marked sounds into unmarked sounds ('reduction'), and (c) a mechanism allowing the distinction between marked and unmarked sounds to be collapsed ('conflation'). He shows that due to these mechanisms, markedness occurs only when preservation is irrelevant. Drawing on examples of phenomena such as epenthesis, neutralisation, assimilation, vowel reduction and sonority-driven stress, Markedness offers an important insight into this essential concept in the understanding of human language.

Edna Andrews clarifies and extends the work of Roman Jakobson to develop a theory of invariants in language by distinguishing between general and contextual meaning in morphology and semantics. Markedness theory, as Jakobson conceived it, is a qualitative theory of oppositional binary relations. Andrews shows how markedness theory enables a linguist to precisely define the systemically given oppositions and hierarchies represented by linguistic categories. In addition, she redefines the relationship between Jakobsonian markedness theory and Peircean interpretants. Though primarily theoretical, the argument is illustrated with discussions about learning a second language, the relationship of linguistics to mathematics (particularly set theory, algebra, topology, and statistics) in their mutual pursuit of invariance, and issues involving grammatical gender and their implications in several languages.

This book proposes a new model of phonology that integrates rules and repairs triggered by markedness constraints in a classical derivational model. In developing this theory, the book offers new solutions to many long-standing problems involving syllabic and segmental phonology with analyses of natural language data, both well-known and relatively unknown. The book also includes a new treatment of Palatalization and Affrication processes, a novel theory of feature visibility as an alternative to feature underspecification and an extensive critique of Optimality Theory.

Phonology - the study of how the sounds of speech are represented in our minds - is one of the core areas of linguistic theory, and is central to the study of human language. This handbook brings together the world's leading experts in phonology to present the most comprehensive and detailed overview of the field. Focusing on research and the most influential theories, the authors discuss each of the central issues in phonological theory, explore a variety of empirical phenomena, and show how phonology interacts with other aspects of language such as syntax, morphology, phonetics, and language acquisition. Providing a one-stop guide to every aspect of this important field, The Cambridge Handbook of Phonology will serve as an invaluable source of readings for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, an informative overview for linguists and a useful starting point for anyone beginning phonological research.

This collection of papers consolidates the observation that linguistic change typically is actualized step by step: any structural innovation being introduced, accepted, and generalized, over time, in one grammatical environment after another, in a progression that can be understood by reference to the markedness values and the ranking of the conditioning features. The Introduction to the volume and a chapter by Henning Andersen clarify the theoretical bases for this observation, which is exemplified and discussed in separate chapters by Kristin Bakken, Alexander Bergs and Dieter Stein, Vit Bubenik, Ulrich Busse, Marianne Mithun, Lene Schosler, and John Charles Smith in the light of data from the histories of Norwegian, English, Hindi, Northern Iroquoian, and Romance. A final chapter by Michael Shapiro adds a philosophical perspective. The papers were first presented in a workshop on "Actualization Patterns in Linguistic Change" at the XIV International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Vancouver, B.C. in 1999.

This volume centers on three important theoretical concepts for the study of language change and the ways in which language structure emerges and turns into new structure: reanalysis, actualization, and indexicality. Reanalysis is a part of ongoing everyday language use, a process through which language is reproduced and changed. Actualization refers to the processes through which a reanalyzed structure spreads throughout single communities and society. Indexicality covers the way in which parts of a linguistic system can point to other parts of the system, both syntagmatically and paradigmatically. The inclusion of indexicality leads to fine-grained analysis in morphology, word order, and constructional syntax.