THE ROLE OF MARKEDNESS IN VOCABULARY LEARNING

One question that has received considerable attention in Second Language Acquisition is whether some linguistic features are harder to acquire in a second language than others. Early stages both in first (L1) and second language (L2) development provide a clear example of the Emergence of the Unmarked (McCarthy & Prince, 1994), which supports the notion that L2 learners acquire the unmarked features before the marked features.

This paper aims to analyse the role of markedness within an L2 vocabulary context. It also aims to identify the effectiveness of each markedness constraint and its ranking in vocabulary comprehension. Finally it addresses the wider pedagogical implications of the Emergence of Unmarked in vocabulary teaching. It reports the findings of an investigation of Turkish adult L2 learners’ comprehension of marked and unmarked English lexical items through a think-aloud procedure. The results indicate that learners encounter more difficulty for lexical items which are marked in terms of complexity and difficulty in comparison to the items which are marked in terms of abnormality.

The interdisciplinary framework of this paper will not only enhance our understanding of L2 vocabulary learning, but also build a bridge between linguistic theory and foreign language teaching. Suggestions for further research within this field will also be addressed.