Flammie A Pirinen on github pages
Saying that things can be represented as invisible things in linguistics is very hard problem for computational processing of the language. From zero derivations to elision…
One obvious use case for zeros in syntax is with conjunctions, He runs and swims linguists tend to mark as He runs and 0 swims where 0 marks that he is elided there but it is not always clear why, after all most languages have same elision. Here are some counter examples from machine translation that can make use of the zero’d things: Brunosten er halvfast og har smaksnyanser (Brown cheese is half-hard and has flavours), because translating it to Finnish requires repeating the subject as to have can only be translated into habitative copular structure by turning the subject owner into an adessive argument: “Brunost on puolikova ja sillä on makuja”, where 0 can be translated into a pronoun that just stands in to get the allative in.