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Markedness Theory and Error Evaluation: An Experimental Study
California State University Los Angeles
In recent years, researchers in second-language acquisition have begun to consider the application of linguistic markedness theory to aspects of second-language learning. This study seeks to extend markedness theory to the area of error evaluation, more specifically the reactions of native speakers to non-native-speaker errors. It is hypothesized that there is a directionality of error gravity involving marked and unmarked pairs of forms and structures such that errors reflecting the unmarked-to-marked direction will cause greater irritation than errors reflecting the marked-to-unmarked direction. The study employed a total of five morphological and syntactic structures as unmarked and marked error types in two student compositions and investigated 40 professors' reactions to them. The five structures were (I) lst-person/3rd-person singular, (2) singular/plural NP, (3) a/an, (4) infinitive/gerund, and (5) active/passive. The results revealed a significant difference between the errors in the unmarked-to-marked category and the marked-to-unmarked category, as hypothesized on the basis of the psycholinguistic implications of markedness theory, namely, greater complexity of the marked form and greater expectation of the more basic unmarked form.