The influence of unmarkedness typical of language acquisition in non-standard spelling forms

Abstract

This paper is based on the possible relation between non-standard spelling forms in Portuguese and English chat sessions and the speakers’ intuitive preference towards the unmarked as far as syllables structures and segments are concerned. A corpora study involving the analysis of online written conversations both in Portuguese and English suggests that some of the deviations from standard orthography, through the suppression, addition or substitution of graphemes, may be related to the intuitive preference for the simplification or reduction of more marked elements at the phonological level.