Theories of language espoused by linguists during much of this century have assumed that there is a hierarchy to the elements of language such that certain constructions, rules, and features are unmarked while others are marked; "happy" for example, is unmarked or neutral, while "unhappy" is marked. This opposition, referred to as markedness, is one of the concepts which both Chomskyan generative grammar and Jakobsonian structuralism appear to share, yet which each tradition has treated differently. Edwin Battistella studies the historical development of the concept of markedness in the Prague School structuralism of Roman Jakobson, its importation into generative linguistics, and its subsequent development within Chomsky's "principles and parameters" framework. He traces how structuralist and generative linguistics have drawn on and expanded the notion of markedness, both as a means of characterizing linguistic constructs and as a theory of the innate language faculty. Rather than proposing a new theory of markedness, The Logic of Markedness studies the evolution of the concept and its treatment in two different but related linguistic frameworks, and as such will appeal to many linguists interested in markedness, in Jakobsonian and Chomskyan theories of grammar, and in language acquisition.

This book proposes a new model of phonology that integrates rules and repairs triggered by markedness constraints in a classical derivational model. In developing this theory, the book offers new solutions to many long-standing problems involving syllabic and segmental phonology with analyses of natural language data, both well-known and relatively unknown. The book also includes a new treatment of Palatalization and Affrication processes, a novel theory of feature visibility as an alternative to feature underspecification and an extensive critique of Optimality Theory.

This book represents a substantial contribution to the field of linguistics in drawing together the author's most significant work on the theory of generative grammar.