Marker (linguistics)
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- 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.
Markers should be distinguished from the linguistic concept of markedness. A marked form is a non-basic form, such as the singular of nouns in English (e.g. "cat" versus "cats"). Unmarked forms (like the nominative case in certain languages) are generally less likely to have markers, but this is not true of all languages (compare Latin). Conversely, marked forms may have a zero affix, like the genitive plural of some nouns in Russian.
[edit] 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.
