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There are North America, Central America, and South America. And, even within North America, there are the USA and Canada. Yet, in US English, if you mention "America" that means the USA.

I am almost certain that UK English has "America" refer exclusively to the USA.

Am I understanding the term "markedness" correctly? What is the correct way to phrase the property of markedness?
"The word, 'America', has the property of markedness."?
"The word, 'America', is a marked word."?

btw: "Dollar" appears to also have markedness. Regardless of the type of English, without need for clarification, a "dollar" is a "US dollar". right?

explanation of "markedness"

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red shoe
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    As regards the dollar, it very much depends where you are. If you were in Australia and you said dollar, the presumption would be that you were speaking about the Australian dollar. Similarly with New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Canada, and no doubt a lot of other places. I don't know what you mean by markedness. – WS2 Mar 10 '15 at 23:15
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    Ask yourself this: if you were in one of the places in the world where they shout "Death to America," would you think they meant Central America? – Robusto Mar 10 '15 at 23:19
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    @ws2 "Markedness" is explained in the Linguistics forum on stack exchange. Just type into the search box over in the linguistics forum: "what is markedness". – red shoe Mar 10 '15 at 23:21
  • I believe it's pronounced "Murrica". – Ian MacDonald Mar 10 '15 at 23:22
  • WS2 is right about "dollars." I live in Australia, and if a local fruit vendor claimed his prices were in American dollars, I'd assume he was either crazy or trying to scam me. – user867 Mar 10 '15 at 23:23
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    In general, reference to "markedness" means a system where there is a default ("unmarked") case and several other "marked" (i.e, special) cases. Keeping track of marked cases is generally considered more expensive (in attention, parsing, effort, etc) than simply using the unmarked case automatically. It's a term used in phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics; at least. The concept (same as "default") is sufficiently general that practically anything can be used as an example, if it's described in the proper way. – John Lawler Mar 10 '15 at 23:44
  • A careful author/speaker would use the word "America" with care, given that it applies to two continents (plus a small bit of Antarctica). I try to use "US" to the extent that sentence construction will facilitate it without awkwardness. – Hot Licks Mar 10 '15 at 23:49
  • @JohnLawler yeah, I reversed it. "America" is unmarked. In countries that don't call their own currency a "dollar", "dollar" is unmarked. got it. – red shoe Mar 10 '15 at 23:50
  • @HotLicks I am totally with you there. It bothers me how people use the term "America". Anyway, glad we agree. – red shoe Mar 10 '15 at 23:51
  • You do not seem to be using the term markedness correctly. I don't think it really applies to a noun like this. Instead you should be looking at implications and connotations. – curiousdannii Mar 10 '15 at 23:53
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    It is the custom that if you chose the answer, you might also consider upvoting it. Unless you found that the answer is terrible but nonetheless the best answer. – Blessed Geek Mar 11 '15 at 00:20
  • @BlessedGeek At the time, I didn't have enough credentials to upvote. – red shoe Mar 11 '15 at 01:44
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    Your question is unclear. Markedness is all about multiple things and their relation to each other (which one is the default/more natural), but you have only mentioned the word 'America'. What do you want to compare 'America' against? The US? USA? The States? Also, which set of speakers is this about? People from the US? People from the UK? Non-native speakers of English? People from Europe speaking English? People from South America speaking English? There's lots here for you to choose first before we can answer. – Mitch Mar 11 '15 at 02:07
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    @JohnLawler Thank you. Thanks to the efforts of you and others I now understand what markedness is. – WS2 Mar 11 '15 at 08:04

1 Answers1

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Markedness is a term of comparison:

Markedness, a term that originated in linguistics, is the state of standing out as unusual or difficult in comparison to a more common or regular form. In a marked–unmarked relation, one term of an opposition is the broader, dominant one. The dominant default or minimum effort form is known as the unmarked form; and the other, secondary one is the marked. In other words, markedness involves the characterization of a "normal" linguistic unit against the unit's possible "irregular" forms.

from en.wikipedia.org

  • Lion is unmarked, because it is the general term that applies to all lions. Lioness is marked, because it refers to a specific subset of lions.
  • Honesty is unmarked, because it is the root word. Dishonesty is marked, because it has a morphological marker.
  • Old is unmarked, because it is the general term used for our scale of age. We ask how old is she as the default. Young is marked, because it refers to a specific range on the scale. We don't ask how young is she, unless we are specifically drawing attention to her youth.
  • Old is also unmarked, because it is the term used for elderly people. Older is marked, because when we say: She's old, her reply is: No! I'm not old, I'm older! But on the unmarked scale older would be older than old!

Markedness depends on context. What is more marked in some general contexts may be less marked in other local contexts. Thus, "ant" is less marked than "ants" on the morphological level, but on the semantic (and frequency) levels it may be more marked since ants are more often encountered many at once than one at a time.

from en.wikipedia.org

In comparing America to America, the context determines markedness:

  • Generally, America is unmarked, when it refers to all of the territory in the western hemisphere, but it is marked when it refers to North America or the USA.
  • In some contexts, America is unmarked, when it refers to the continent of North America , but it is marked when it refers to the USA.
  • In the United States, it could be said that America is unmarked, when it refers to the USA, and it is marked when it refers to North America or all of the territory in the western hemisphere.

In almost all contexts, dollar would refer to a specific currency where no other dollar is marked in comparison. On the other hand, since the US Dollar is the default currency on the international market, it can be said that the dollar is unmarked, and all other dollars are marked by their national connection, as well as their relationship to the US Dollar:

$10 US Dollars currently equals:

Australian Dollar: $10.88

Bahamian Dollar: $10.00

Barbadian Dollar: $20.00

Belize Dollar: $20.00

Bermudan Dollar: $10.00

Brunei Dollar: $12.68

Canadian Dollar: $10.52

Eastern Caribbean Dollar: $27.00

Fijian Dollar: $18.74

Guyana Dollar: $2,000.50

Hong Kong Dollar: $77.55

Jamaican Dollar: $1,007.00

Liberian Dollar: $745.00

Namibian Dollar: $99.00

New Zealand Dollar: $12.82

Singapore Dollar: $12.67

Solomon Islands Dollar: $71.40

Surinamese Dollar: $32.75

Taiwanese Dollar: $300.12

Trinidad and Tobago Dollar: $62.51

Zimbabwe Dollar: $3,748.00

from jaunted.com/ As of July 8,2013

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ScotM
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    I assume you got it from Wikipedia, since I can't find any other source citing honesty, dishonesty as an "unmarked, marked" pair. I think I need some convincing about that. You can talk about levels of honesty, or dishonesty, and either could in principle encompass the entire cline. And either can also be used of just one end of the continuum - "She is known for honesty", "He is known for dishonesty". – FumbleFingers Mar 11 '15 at 00:57
  • Context is everything when it comes to markedness! I chose honesty as the unmarked because dishonesty has a morphological marker. – ScotM Mar 11 '15 at 01:11
  • Actually it looks more like... The unmarked member is the one used in questions of degree. We ask, ordinarily, “how high is the mountain?” {not “how low is it?”} By the same token, we'd usually ask "How honest is he?". Though to be honest I think it impugns the subject of the enquiry almost as much as "How dishonest* is he?"*. – FumbleFingers Mar 11 '15 at 01:26
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    The markedness of honesty and dishonesty is not so clearly a matter of degree, so high/low would be a better example. – ScotM Mar 11 '15 at 01:55
  • @Fumble Apart from semantics, honest is morphologically unmarked and dishonest marked, just like sit is morphologically unmarked (plain form) and sat marked (past tense). – Janus Bahs Jacquet Mar 11 '15 at 02:10
  • Dollar originates from the German coin thaler in the 16th century. – WS2 Mar 11 '15 at 08:12
  • Germany rules the world after all! – ScotM Mar 11 '15 at 08:19
  • @Janus: I see now that "marked/unmarked" status can vary by context. Personally I can't imagine using *America* to refer to all of the territory in the western hemisphere - to me that would have to be plural *The Americas. Nor would I be likely to use the single word to include both the USA and Canada, since that would almost always be North America. By the same token, to me Canadians* aren't a subset of Americans (I guess they're a subset of *North Americans*, but that's not a demonym I'd expect to use in the first place). – FumbleFingers Mar 11 '15 at 12:54
  • @FumbleFingers You have exactly expressed my initial observation. It bothers me that "America" is assumed "USA" because the world does not revolve around the USA. "America" should have a broader meaning. Yet, that "America" means "USA" just is what it is. So, my way to explain this is to place the blame of "markedness", and not on US self-centeredness. – red shoe Mar 11 '15 at 16:29
  • @dwakam: Well, from my perspective, unqualified America always means The USA, so it's not the same as "unmarked" *dog* (which can either mean any canine or specifically the male dog as opposed to a femmale dog, bitch). – FumbleFingers Mar 11 '15 at 16:48