nulmarkering

Nulmarkering, or zero marking, is a term in linguistics that describes the absence of overt morphological marking on a word where such marking could carry grammatical information. In languages with nulmarkering, nouns, verbs, adjectives, or determiners may appear without inflections for case, number, gender, tense, mood, aspect, definiteness, or other categories. Information that would be signaled by affixes or separate function words is instead conveyed by syntax, word order, particles, tone, or context.

Nulmarkering is best understood as a point on a spectrum rather than a binary property. Some languages are heavily marked, others show extensive zero marking in certain domains, and many combine marked and unmarked forms across different grammatical areas. For example, a language might mark nouns for case but lack definite or indefinite articles, or it might not inflect verbs for tense while still using pronouns with some gender or number distinctions.

Common domains where zero marking occurs include noun case endings, definite or indefinite articles, pronoun gender or number, and verbal tense or agreement. Languages such as Mandarin Chinese are often cited as highly analytic in this sense: nouns typically lack case endings, verbs do not inflect for tense, and there is no true indefinite article; definite reference is typically expressed through demonstratives or context. Other languages may exhibit zero marking only in specific constructions, such as certain aspectual or evidential forms.

The study of nulmarkering informs typology, historical linguistics, and language acquisition, highlighting how languages distribute grammatical information between morphology and syntax. See also zero marking and zero article.