Markedness of Antonyms

Markedness is useful for the analysis of binary oppositions. The marked form is less common than the unmarked one. The unmarked form is the basic form and thus the default. Many marked adjectives have prefixes such as impossible, irregular and unlikely.

The unmarked form is the one which is usually used in communication. For example, the following questions use unmarked forms:

How big is the house?
How full is the container?
How good is your Italian?
How long is the bridge?
How much is it?
How heavy is the box?
How old are you?
How sure are you that they are coming?
How tall are you?
How wide is the road?

If the marked form is used, it contains a presupposition. For example, the question How bad is your Italian? presupposes that the hearer is bad at Italian. The question How small is the house? presupposes that the house is small.

In word pairs such as big/small and young/old, the word with higher value is unmarked. Other word pairs have positive and negative characteristics such as bad/good and lucky/unlucky. With these types of word pairs, the word with a positive value is unmarked.

The concept of markedness is often used in linguistics. Marked forms are irregular and less common than unmarked ones. The unmarked forms can thus be considered basic.