unmarked (adj.)

A term used in LINGUISTICS in various senses, to refer to a property of language which is more neutral, common, expected or general than a corresponding property, which is said to be MARKED. Unmarked values in some approaches are also often called ‘default’ values, and can be handled by conditions that a category must meet if it can, but need not meet if it cannot, e.g. the default value for CASE might be ACCUSATIVE. The current use of the term in CORE grammar should be noted, as should its use in recent PHONOLOGICAL theory (e.g. UNDERSPECIFICATION theory).