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.
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- One The Principles of Jakobsonian Markedness Theory
- Gesamtbedeutung and a Definition of Markedness
- A Brief History of Markedness: From Trubetzkoy to the Present
- Jakobson’s and van Schooneveld’s Morphological Features
- Mark or Feature?
- Deixis: A General Definition
- Deixis and Reference
- The Union of Conceptual Feature and Deictic Category: Shifters in the Russian Verb
- Two Peirce and Jakobson Revisited: A Reconciliation
- Peirce’s Influence on Jakobson
- Markedness Theory as a Theory of Interpretants
- Sign, Object, and Interpretant
- The Categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness
- The Ultimate Interpretant
- Meaning and Interpretants
- Icon, Index, Symbol, and Artifice?
- Dyads or Triads?
- An Application of Peircean Interpretants to Linguistic Analysis
- Three Markedness Theory as Mathematical Principle
- Mathematics: Topology and Its Relevance to Jakobsonian Linguistics
- The Role of Syllogisms and Different Types of Inference
- Deductive, Inductive, and Abductive Reasoning
- Continuity or Discontinuity?
- Dynamics and Structural Stability
- Catastrophe Theory and Linguistic Sign Theory
- An Axiomatic Base for Markedness
- The Morphological Conceptual Features and Group Theory
- The Laws of Form and the Form of Laws
- Four Myths About Markedness
- Statistical Frequency
- Neutralization
- Markedness Assimilation
- Markedness Reversals
- Substitutability
- Five The Category of Grammatical Gender in Russian, Serbo-Croatian, and Modern Greek
- Modern Greek (Dhimotiki/Demotic) and the Role of the -s Marker
- Jakobson’s Analysis of the Category of Gender in Modern Russian
- The Serbo-Croatian Gender Hierarchy
- Shifting Genders
- Grammatical Gender versus Declension: Syntagmatic Vs. Paradigmatic
- Is Gender Meaningful?
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
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