Proceedings - Translation Concepts

3 Marked Structures
MuTra 2006 – Audiovisual Translation Scenarios: Conference Proceedings
Lena Hamaidia
The definition of a “marked” sentence or clause implies that it has features, which distinguish
it from an “unmarked” type of sentence and indeed that the unmarked is the preferred or
standard form (Schmid 1999:45). This also implies that the same sentence elements could be
presented in either the marked or the unmarked order however the marked sentence stands out
as unusual in implicit comparison with the conventionally ordered unmarked sentence.
Although the “unmarked” sentence could be described as standard or conventional this does
not mean that it is used more often than the “marked” sentence. Indeed, Dryer argues that
unmarked word order is not necessarily used more frequently than marked word order and
considers the term “default word order” to be a more accurate definition of pragmatically
unmarked word order (Dryer 1995:105).
As the purpose of a marked sentence is to express the communicative intention of the
speaker it is “cognitively more complex” than the unmarked version. The information content
of both marked and unmarked versions of the same sentence may be the same but the use of a
marked structure generally communicates a different shade of meaning (Haiman 1980:517)
For example, by changing the SVO sequence to OSV in the following sentence the
object “you” is brought into sharp focus in comparison with the same word in the same
sentence with the elements arranged in the standard SVO sequence:
Marked word order:
“Bua