Linguistic markedness and its application in studying dummy subjects in Vietnamese and English

Abstract

This paper presents basic theoretical background on typological markedness in linguistics, its application in linguistic research and attempts to investigate dummy subjects in Vietnamese and English basing on this theory. Since Trubetzkoy’s work (1939), markedness has been frequently used as a typological research approach all over the world. This theory is useful because it helps researchers find out typological features at different levels of markedness and identify linguistic universals as well as testing them. In terms of markedness, dummy subjects in Vietnamese are quite different from those in English. Dummy subjects, in general, are a highly marked linguistic phenomenon. Dummy subjects in Vietnamese are found to be more marked that those in English because they are not as “common, basic or natural” in its use. Findings of this research are hoped to be worthwhile for teaching and learning English dummy subjects and in translation as well.