A dependent-marking language has grammatical markers of

agreement Agreement may refer to: Agreements between people and organizations * Gentlemen's agreement, not enforceable by law * Trade agreement, between countries * Consensus, a decision-making process * Contract, enforceable in a court of law ** Meeting ...

and

case government In linguistics, case government is government of the grammatical case of a noun, wherein a verb or adposition is said to 'govern' the grammatical case of its noun phrase complement, e.g. in German the preposition 'for' governs the accusative case: ...

between the words of

phrase In syntax and grammar, a phrase is a group of words or singular word acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adjective phrase "very happy". Phrases can consi ...

s that tend to appear more on dependents than on

head A head is the part of an organism which usually includes the ears, brain, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyes, nose, and mouth, each of which aid in various sensory functions such as sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Some very simple animals ...

s. The distinction between head-marking and dependent-marking was first explored by Johanna Nichols in 1986, and has since become a central criterion in language typology in which languages are classified according to whether they are more head-marking or dependent-marking. Many languages employ both head and dependent-marking, but some employ double-marking, and yet others employ zero-marking. However, it is not clear that the head of a clause has anything to do with the head of a noun phrase, or even what the head of a clause is.

In English

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

has few inflectional markers of agreement and so can be construed as zero-marking much of the time. Dependent-marking, however, occurs when a singular or plural noun demands the singular or plural form of the demonstrative determiner ''this/these'' or ''that/those'' and when a verb or preposition demands the subject or object form of a personal pronoun: ''I/me'', ''he/him'', ''she/her'', ''they/them'', ''who/whom''. The following representations of

dependency grammar Dependency grammar (DG) is a class of modern grammatical theories that are all based on the dependency relation (as opposed to the ''constituency relation'' of phrase structure) and that can be traced back primarily to the work of Lucien Tesni� ...

illustrate some cases:Dependency grammar trees similar to the ones that appear here can be found en masse in Ágel et al. (2003/6). : Dependent marking 1

Plural nouns in English require the plural form of a dependent demonstrative determiner, and prepositions require the object form of a dependent personal pronoun.

In German

Such instances of dependent-marking are a relatively rare occurrence in English, but dependent-marking occurs much more frequently in related languages, such as

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

. There, for instance, dependent-marking is present in most noun phrases. A noun marks its dependent determiner: :: Dependent marking 2

The noun marks the dependent determiner in gender (masculine, feminine, or neuter) and number (singular or plural). In other words, the gender and number of the noun determine the form of the determiner that must appear. Nouns in German also mark their dependent adjectives in gender and number, but the markings vary across determiners and adjectives. Also, a head noun in German can mark a dependent noun with the genitive case.

References

Sources

*Ágel, V., L. Eichinger, H.-W. Eroms, P. Hellwig, H. Heringer, and H. Lobin (eds.) 2003/6. Dependency and valency: An international handbook of contemporary research. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. *Nichols, J. 1986. Head-marking and dependent-marking grammar. Language 62, 1, 56-119. *Nichols, J. 1992. Linguistic diversity in space and time. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. {{DEFAULTSORT:Dependent-Marking Language Linguistic typology

In English

In German

See also

References

Sources