Is markedness a confused concept?

It is well known that, across languages, certain phonological features are more frequent than others. But whether these facts reflect abstract universal markedness constraints or functional pressures (auditory and articulatory difficulties and lexical frequency) is unknown. Romani, Galuzzi, Guariglia, and Goslin (2017) report that the putative markedness of phonological features captures their order of acquisition and their propensity to elicit errors in patients with an apraxia of speech (but not in phonological aphasia). The authors believe these results challenge the existence of abstract markedness constraints. They also raise some concerns about the explanatory utility of the markedness hypothesis. This commentary demonstrates that markedness is not inherently vague or vacuous nor is it falsified by Romani et al.'s empirical findings. As such, these results leave wide open the possibility that some phonological markedness constraints are abstract.