Re: THEORY: two questions

Matt Pearson wrote:

> Depends on who you ask.  My definition:  A head-marking
> language is one which keeps track of arguments (who did
> what to whom) primarily by means of agreement on the verb,
> while a dependent-marking language keeps track of arguments
> primarily by means of case-marking on the noun phrases.
Analogously, languages with genitives are dependent-marking,
whereas languages with "construct state" nouns are head-marking?

And what are English and Mandarin: neither-marking?  They look
more like dependent-marking to me, but not according to the
above definition.

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