Unmarked term

From Conservapedia
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by BryonRichards (talk | contribs) at 05:05, April 15, 2008. It may differ significantly from current revision.
Jump to navigation Jump to search

host is unmarked, but hostess is morphologically marked for femaleness. ... in the pair horse/mare, horse is the more general, unmarked term, while mare is marked for femaleness. In the pair cow/bull, cow is unmarked, while bull is marked for maleness. - Tom McArthur, Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language [1]