Double-marking language

A double-marking language is one in which the grammatical marks showing relations between different constituents of a phrase tend to be placed on both the heads (or nuclei) of the phrase in question, and on the modifiers or dependents. Pervasive double-marking is rather rare, but instances of double-marking occur in many languages.

For example, in Turkish, in a genitive construction involving two definite nouns, both the possessor and the possessed are marked, the former in the genitive case, the latter with a suffix marking the possessor (and corresponding to a possessive adjective in English). For example, 'brother' is kardeş, and 'dog' is köpek, but 'brother's dog' is kardeşin köpeği. (The consonant change is part of a regular consonant mutation.)

Another example is a language in which endings that mark gender or case are used to indicate the role of both nouns and their associated modifiers (such as adjectives) in a sentence (e.g. Russian, Spanish); or in which case endings are supplemented by verb endings marking the subject, direct object and/or indirect object of a sentence. The Proto-Indo-European language was double-marking in both verb phrases (verbs were marked for person and number, nominals for case) and noun-adjective phrases (both marked with the same case-and-number endings), but not in possessive phrases (only the dependent was marked).

References

• Nichols, J. 1986. Head-marking and dependent-marking grammar. Language 62, 1, 56-119.

See also

• Dependent-marking language
• Head-marking language
• Zero-marking language