Markedness Theory and Its Application in Second Language Acquisition Research

作为结构主义语言学的重要理论之一，自标记理论(markedness)这一概念问世就受到各个学派及其相关学科的广泛关注，在本文中，标记理论及与其相关的几个基本问题——标记理论的涵义、标记确定的标准和标记转移现象得到初步探讨。本文基于标记理论，探讨其对第二语言习得(Second Language Acquisition, SLA)的影响。研究发现，在二语习得过程中，有标记(marked)或标记程度高的语言特征，其习得时间通常晚于无标记(unmarked)或标记程度低的特征。同时，第二语言的学习难度与其标记程度呈正相关，而母语特征的迁移(language transfer)是否发生，也取决于相关语言项的标记程度。As one of the important theories of Structural Linguistics, since it’s emergence, the Markedness has received the extensive attention of many schools and related fields. This article systematically examines three fundamental aspects of markedness: (1) its theoretical definition, (2) the operational criteria for determining marked status, and (3) the phenomenon of markedness transfer. Focusing on second language acquisition (SLA), the findings reveal that marked (or highly marked) linguistic features in a target language are typically acquired later than their unmarked (or less marked) counterparts. Furthermore, the learning difficulty of these features exhibits a positive correlation with their degree of markedness. Additionally, the occurrence of L1 transfer is shown to be contingent upon the markedness level of the relevant linguistic items.