Is the grammar constrained by universal, language-specific principles?
Linguists have long noted that certain linguistic patterns are more frequent and natural than others. Furthermore, the existence of frequent patterns asymmetrically implicates rare ones. Such regularities have been attributed to markedness scales: Frequent, natural patterns are unmarked, whereas those that are rare and less natural are relatively marked. The cross-linguistic universality of markedness restrictions renders them as plausible candidates for innate linguistic constraints. My work examines whether speakers are sensitive to markedness restrictions, their nature and origins using several case studies: • Markedness restrictions concerning sonority (in collaboration with Donca Steriade, Paul Smolensky and Tracy Lennertz). Linguistic evidence suggests that onset clusters with a small sonority rise (e.g., bnif) are preferred to those with a sonority plateau (e.g., bdif), which, in turn, are favored relative to sonority falls (e.g., lbif). Our research demonstrates that this unive
