Types of Free Marking and Their Correlations in Grammatical Subsystems

A traditional approach to the marking of syntactic relations within the phrase, proposed by Johanna Nichols in (Nichols, 1986) and further developed in (Nichols, 1992), is based on the concept of headedness. However, a number of languages do not fit into this theory: there are constructions with free marking which cannot be explained only by stating which of the words in the phrase is the head and which is dependent. This type is free or detached marking. The new analysis, proposed by Johanna Nichols and Yury Lander, permits to reintperpret the examples of free and neutral marking as head or dependent marking. In this research, I will reinterpret free and neutral marking examples according to the extended locus concept. I will also check the correlations between type of marking and other languages parameters (such as word order and alignment) and certain grammatical categories: gender, noun classes, inalienable possession, inclusive/exclusive 1st person plural pronouns.