Comments by "Laurence Fraser" (@laurencefraser) on "What are (linguistic) nothings? ~ Reading comments and studying Saussure together" video.

@halagavi While you're correct about English not liking ambiguous grammar, in this case there's a little more to it. Just saying "Rain" in English is meaningful... The problem is that the meaning is an imperative verb: You are commanding who/whatever you're speaking to to perform the act of raining. Well, you can also say 'Rain' by itself and have it be a noun if you are asking a question (I think the question would have to be 'what is X?' or 'what is the word for X?', though), because questions are weird and the constrution of answers to questions are weirder. Basically, zero-marking the subject has an actual meaning (or several), so when you don't want to use that meaning you need to mark the subject. Especially as sentences with no Verb are also possible, and English can turn a noun into a verb (among other things) just by moving where it is in the sentence without otherwise marking it in any way.
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Understanding why they find it upsetting doesn't change how unreasonable being upset by it is, of course. Such responses are generally a result of ideological indoctrination and (either consequently or additionally) a lack of actual thought on the part of the person becoming upset by it. It isn't exactly something that should be excused. There are rare exceptions of course, I say 'generally' for a reason, but that's the usual way of things.
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@MyMy-tv7fd It is the difference between a bare stem, where that bareness is meaningless (leaving things unstated or unclear), and a bare stem, where that bareness is meaningful (the lack of modifiers is itself a modifier, essentailly). Zero marking is the latter. Mind you, English can do zero marking as well: cat, The cat, A cat, The Cats, cats, Cat. The first one is a bare stem. The second has a marked definite article, and a zero marked singular number. The third has a marked indeifnite article and a zero marked singular number. The fourth has a marked definite article and a marked plural number The fifth has a zero marked indefinite article and a marked plural number The sixth is a proper noun, having a zero marked definite article and a zero marked singular number. (it also has nothing to do with cats, being a diminutive of Cathrin (or many other variations on that name). Note that the 'cat' in 'the cat' and 'a cat' is not, gramatically speaking, a bare stem, despite having no afixes. English only really uses the bare stem of nouns as a reference form. The important part is that a bare stem is making no distinction between various possible options (it doesn't mark number or definiteness, in the case of 'cat'), while a zero marked term Does make a distinction, and one (or more) of the options is (or are) indicated by saying or writing something, while the other is indicated by the fact that you did not. It's basically the difference between starting counting from 0 vs starting counting from 1. Humans tend to naturally do the second, but because of how many things in computing work, almost all computer related things start at 0 instead. so rather than having a number list like: 1: rabbit 2: duck 3: badger Computer code will usually read like this: 0: rabbit 1: duck 2: badger Zero marking is a similar concept.
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