Re: Unmarked definiteness

Quoting "Mark P. Line" <mark@...>:

> 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.
That's true, but I was thinking from a more typological angle; my impression is
that the definite is usually at least as marked as the indefinite. Is this
true?

                                                     Andreas

Reply