Marker (linguistics)

Encyclopedia : M : MA : MAR : Marker (linguistics)

For other meanings, see the disambiguation page Marker

In linguistics, a marker is a free or bound morpheme that indicates the grammatical function of the marked word or sentence. In analytic languages and agglutinative languages, markers are generally easily distinguished. In fusional languages and polysynthetic languages, this is often not the case. In the Latin word amo, "I love", for instance, the suffix -o marks indicative mood, active voice, first person, singular, present tense. Latin is a highly fusional language.

A lexeme is called marked if it contains a marker, and unmarked if not. In nominative-accusative languages, the nominative case is typically unmarked.

Examples

English: the suffix -s in dogs is a plural marker
Latin: the suffix -is in flaminis is a case marker, specifically a genitive marker
Spanish: the word hay in hay muchos libros en la biblioteca is an existential marker
Japanese: the Japanese particle が (ga) in ジョンが学生です。[Jon ga gakusei desu.] 'John is a student.' is a subject marker

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.