A zero-marking language is one with no grammatical marks on the dependents or the

modifiers In linguistics, a modifier is an optional element in phrase structure or clause structure which ''modifies'' the meaning of another element in the structure. For instance, the adjective "red" acts as a modifier in the noun phrase "red ball", provi ...

or the heads or nuclei that show the relationship between different constituents of a phrase. Pervasive zero marking is very rare, but instances of zero marking in various forms occur in quite a number of

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...

Vietnamese Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia ** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam. * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overse ...

and

Indonesian Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to: * Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia ** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago ** Indonesian ...

are two national languages listed in the

World Atlas of Language Structures The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) is a database of structural (phonological, grammatical, lexical) properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials. It was first published by Oxford University Press as a book with CD-ROM i ...

as having zero-marking. In many East and Southeast Asian languages, such as

Thai Thai or THAI may refer to: * Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia ** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand ** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand *** Thai script *** Thai (Unicode block ...

and

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...

, the head

verb A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...

and its dependents are not marked for any arguments or for the

noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...

s' roles in the sentence. On the other hand, possession is marked in such languages by the use of clitic particles between possessor and possessed. Some languages, such as many dialects of

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...

, use a similar process, called juxtaposition, to indicate possessive relationships. In Arabic, two nouns next to each other could indicate a possessed-possessor construction: ' "Maryam's books" (literally "books Maryam"). In Classical and

Modern Standard Arabic Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or Modern Written Arabic (MWA), terms used mostly by linguists, is the variety of Standard language, standardized, Literary language, literary Arabic that developed in the Arab world in the late 19th and early 20th ...

, however, the second noun is in the genitive case, as in '. Zero-marking, when it occurs, tends to show a strong relationship with word order. Languages in which zero-marking is widespread are almost all subject–verb–object, perhaps because verb-medial order allows two or more

s to be recognized as such much more easily than

subject–object–verb Subject ( la, subiectus "lying beneath") may refer to: Philosophy *'' Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing **Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective con ...

, object–subject–verb,

verb–subject–object A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...

, or verb–object–subject order, for which two nouns might be adjacent and their role in a sentence possibly thus confused. It has been suggested that verb-final languages may be likely to develop verb-medial order if marking on nouns is lost.

References

* Maddieson, Ian. "Locus of Marking: Whole-Language Typology", in Martin Haspelmath et al. (eds.) ''The World Atlas of Language Structures'', pp. 106–109. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. {{ISBN, 0-19-925591-1.

External links

WALS Feature/Chapter 25: Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology
Linguistic typology Zero (linguistics)

See also

References

External links