Against Markedness (and What to Replace it With) – Haspelmath (2006)
Haspelmath argues that notions of markedness in linguistics are unmotivated . He instead proposes to replace the notions by detailed analysis and explanations based on textual frequency. He systematically examines 12 different uses of markedness throughout the linguistic literature showing in each case why the notion of markedness is unmotivated and could be replaced by alternative analysis or simpler explanations. His overall claim is that there is generally no theme unifying the different uses of markedness other than iconicity which he rejects in another paper and frequency which he favors. As a result he dismisses the notion and challenges users of markedness based explanations to justify its use. I found his claim that rarity/frequency in the world is strictly speaking irrelevant for linguistics surprising. He goes on to say all that matters is text frequency, which is sometimes, but by no means always correlated with frequency in the world but does not really back up his claim with evidence. I also think Haspelmath underestimates the degree to which contextual situations can effect the phenomena he is examining. It is not just frequency of use that is important but contextual frequency.