From: Kenneth Whistler (kenw@sybase.com)
Date: Wed Apr 28 2010 - 14:32:12 CDT
> Could you tell me where is the community,
> and the size of community that using the
> term "zeroing element" or "linguistic zero"?
> It sounds new term for me.
The term "linguistic zero" has been around in linguistics
for awhile now.
Exactly how a linguist uses it will depend on what
theories they ascribe to, but two common usages
would include:
1. A null morpheme. This is a case where there is
a derivational pattern which in general might involve
a specific addition of an affix to a word, but which in
other cases might involve no overt affix (and no
change in pronunciation, either). Examples abound
in English, where nouns may be turned into verbs
(or verbs into nouns) without specific changes in
form. In morphological analysis, such cases may be
represented by addition of a "null morpheme", which
is often represented by the symbol U+2205 EMPTY SET.
2. A phonological zero. This concept arises from
certain kinds of phonological analysis, where there
may be a pattern indicating the presence of a
phoneme (or other kind of segment, depending on
your theory and the level of analysis involved), but
where there is no actual sound present. These
phonological zeroes may also often be represented
by the symbol U+2205 EMPTY SET.
(And indeed, if you look at the Unicode code chart
entry for U+2205, there in an annotation to that
effect.)
In response to Naga's question:
1. A halant is not a graphological "zero", because it
is a visible part of the writing system which indicates
a particular pronunciation (i.e., the omission of a vowel).
So it can be considered an actual grapheme.
2. A halant is not a phonological "zero" (see above).
It isn't a pattern point for a missing sound. Instead,
it is just a visible way of representing a phoneme (i.e., /k/)
instead of a sequence of phonemes (i.e., /ka/).
Just my opinions, of course. YMMD. ;-)
--Ken
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