Contemporary American English has a peculiar device at its disposal for expressing emphasis, whereby the stress is retracted onto a preposition in a prepositional phrase, as in the following statement and response: “You need to tell him to dó it.” “Tó do it isn’t so easy.” The stressed preposition can only be explained as an implementation of the PRINCIPLE OF MARKED BEGINNINGS, which was first enunciated by Y-H-B as applying to metric structure in an article on verse theory (“The Meaning of Meter,” Russian Verse Theory [UCLA Slavic Studies, 18], ed. B. Scherr and D. S. Worth, 331-349. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1989; revised version in Michael and Marianne Shapiro, The Sense of Form in Literature and Language, 2nd, expanded ed., 259-77. Scotts Valley, Calif.: CreateSpace, 2009).
In a larger semiotic context going beyond verse and even language, beginnings, middles, and ends always have a value such that beginnings are marked, ends less marked by comparison––but still marked––and middles unmarked. These markedness values need to be taken into account whenever there is a stretch of semiotic space that has this fundamental tripartite structure.
MICHAEL SHAPIRO
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