Marked and unmarked: A choice between unequais in semiotic structure
LINDA R. WAUGH
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Introduction
Markedness — the asymmetrical and hierarchical relationship between the two poles of any opposition — has been a central concept in both phonology and semantics (grammar) in linguistics since the 1930s, when it was .  first defined and utilized in a systematic way by Nikolaj Trubetzkoy and Roman Jakobson.1 Since that time it has found wide application both in ;   linguistics and in other studies of semiotic systems, for example, Claude Iivi-Strauss's work in anthropology. It has become increasingly clear, however, that the nature of markedness has been misunderstood by I   linguists and other semioticians alike and that in particular semioticians !   have based their understanding of markedness on the phonological model (and often a misunderstood phonological model, at that), while for most i  semiotic work, markedness in semantic (grammatical and lexical) systems r  proves to be the much more powerful and insightful analog. This is especially so since the semantic system is that area where oppositions |  obtain in the signa turn while phonology is that area where oppositions j  obtain in the signans. Furthermore, the semantic system correlates the oppositions in the signatum with differences in form, while in phonology ]   the oppositions in the signans are correlated only with 'differentiatedness' .  (-otherness) in the signatum. (It is this difference that is the basis for \   'double articulation'.2) If we take the type of signatum as criterial, then we j  can say that phonology is that area based primarily on the 'differen-j  tiatedness' of the signatum, while semantics is that area based primarily on '  the tsignificativeness, of the signatum,  its association with a given ]  conceptual category. Since most work in semiotic systems deals with ,  significative domains, it would seem then to be a phonological (and !  perforce linguistic)  contraband  to apply  notions such as  "difTeren-j tiatedness' to domains that are properly vsignificative\
|   Semiotica 38-3/4 (1982), 299-318.                                   0037-1998/82/0038-0299 S2.00
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