Talk:Zero (linguistics)

From the description of the pronoun form of zero, it sounds very similar to a Metasyntactic variable in computer programming. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.127.191.94 (talk) 22:41, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Character doesn't get displayed
On my pc (Windows XP Home Edition, IE 8.0.6001), trying to disply the Unicode Character 'EMPTY SET' (U+2205) using (producing "∅") shows a square. Using (producing "") shows the correct symbol (a diagonally crossed circle). Tips? Suggestions? Comments? May I replace the Unicode template with the IPA one? Dan ☺ 14:36, 7 March 2010 (UTC)


 * @Dan Pelleg It is probably because you are using an unsupported font. JordiLopezboy (talk) 00:12, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

PRO
"the zero in the book ∅ I am reading works like the that in the book that I am reading. This is also referred to as PRO." I've seen PRO (or 'pro', depending on theoretical considerations) used for empty pronouns, but I haven't seen it used for an empty complementizer. I'm not saying it isn't--the complementizer in this case is sometimes called a relative pronoun--so I don't want to change the wording. (If the change is made, I would suggest swapping the order of the two sentences, since the preceding examples are indeed empty pronominals.) Mcswell (talk) 17:42, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

The sooner the better
The article says “In English the copula is sometimes omitted in set phrases, such as "The sooner the better," [...]”. This is wrong. First, that’s not just a set phrase. It’s a quirky grammatical construction (CGEL calls it the correlative comparative construction) that produces all sorts of statements along those lines: the uglier the better, the more ridiculous the better, and ultimately stuff like the more people contribute, the harder it is to manage. Second, this clearly is not a case where the copula is omitted, because if you put it in, you’re looking at a totally different sentence. The sooner is the better can mean that the sooner of two options we’re discussing is the better one. On top of the change in meaning, the article the in that sentence is etymologically unrelated to the word the in the correlative comparative construction. —Jorend (talk) 15:23, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

How is this article too technical?
Perhaps I'm missing something here, but this article seems fine. I wouldn't consider myself an expert on linguistics, but I can understand everything here pretty easily. Rahul kumar12 (talk) 07:50, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I mostly agree with you, but I expanded the article and cleaned up some jargon, and removed the tag. No such user (talk) 15:31, 7 November 2017 (UTC)