Andreas Johansson said:
>
> Now, while it's not hard to see how this state of affairs came about -
> phonetic change simply ate the definite marker alive, but only snatched a
> leg from the indefinite one - but nonetheless seems remarkable; normally,
> we'd expect the indefinite to be the less marked form, wouldn't we?
I wouldn't. I'd expect the referents of most NP's to be recoverable from
context (i.e. to be definite). So it wouldn't surprise me to find a
natlang in which only NP's whose referents are *not* so recoverable (i.e.
are indefinite) are marked.
-- Mark