what are the Marked and unmarked forms in measurements?

Question

For example:

• A: The worst thing about the film was its length.
• B: The worst thing about the film was its shortness.

Which of the two is grammatically correct?

or

Are both sentences grammatically correct?

Answer 1

Many adjectives and nouns that are used in measurements comein pairs (e.g. tall/short,old/young, heavy/light,fast/slow). The word that is used for the ‘top’ end of the measurement scale canusually be used in anothersense, to talk about thequality in general. For instance, one can ask how long something is even if it is relatively short.Grammarians call these uses ‘unmarked’. So the correct answer should be: The worst thing about the film was its length.

Answer 2

Measurements normally use the high end of the scale to be expressed. We therefore say:

• How long was the film?

We wouldn't say:

• How short was the film?

unless we referred to a short film.

Same thing happens with height and width.

"length" is ambiguous: it can mean the condition of being long, or be synonymous (in the case of films) with "duration".

If you want to criticize the film for being too short, you can use (B) or:

• C: The worst thing about the film was its short length/duration.

or:

• D: The worst thing about the film was that it was too short.