In this article, the author first refers to zero in Arabian arithmetic, the concept of which originated in India. He then goes on to explore the concept of zero used in the linguistic descriptions of Panini of ancient India and N. Motoori of 18th century Japan.
Finally, he deals with the use of zero by F. de Saussure and his pupils, Baudouin de Courtenay, R. Jakobson and others in modern linguistics. The author regards‘signe zéro’ and ‘zéro suffixe’ in Saussure's pupils' original lecture notes (Cours de linguistique gdnerale (CLG) edited by R. Engler, 192, 424) as conceptually different from ‘zéro signe’ and‘suffixe zéro’ respectively. In the corresponding places (pp.124, 256) of the version (1931³) of CLG published by C. Bally and A. Sechehaye, the term ‘signe zéro’ remains as it was, but ‘zéro suffixe’ is replaced by ‘suffixe zéro’.
It is the opinion of the author that the term‘zéro’ in the expression ‘zéro suffixe’ can be interpreted to mean the absence of one grammatical element in a linguistic form. On the other hand, the term ‘zéro’ in the expression ‘signe zéro’ seems to mean the absence of sound which functions in the same way as the ‘signifiant ’ in ‘signe linguistique ’. He suggests that the distinction between these two zeroes seems to be similar to the one between zero used as a place holder in a number (e.g. 108, 180) and zero used as a number. This distinction was pointed out by T. Hayashi in his study of ancient Indian mathematics. The concepts of ‘signe zéro’ and ‘suffixe zéro’ were developed later by the Genevan School.
As an instance of zero in linguistic description, the author gives a 0 suffix in Uilta, a Tungus language spoken on Sakhalin Island.

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One of the most important theoretical problems of English imperatives is concerned with whether we can postulate the category AUX and the category COMP in them as in declaratives or interrogatives. The solution of the problem leads to a clearer characterization of AUX and COMP in English grammar in general, and to a correct understanding of the categorical status of ‘imperative’ do and don't.
In this paper I analyse the structure of English imperatives making a comparison between them and English infinitives or subjunctives present, and argue for the following points:
(a) The is no AUX in English imperatives (or in English infinitives and subjunctives present).
(b) There is the category IMP, instead of COMP, in English imperatives.
(c)‘Imperative’ do and don't are dominated by IMP, not by AUX, and their lexical category is S-Prt (=Sentence Particle).
(d) The do and don't are single lexical items with their own semantic content.
Furthermore, I argue that the postulation of the category S-Prt helps explain some syntactic properties of why of ‘why (not) sentences’ or let's in English, and those of various sentence-final particles lik na, ka, etc. in Japanese from a typological point of view.

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Within the traditional analysis of Japanese, there has been an assignment of nominative case to the particles WA and GA, and they both have been correlated with the grammatical category of ‘subject’. This dual-subject arrangement has sometimes been separated into a ‘subject’ indicated by GA and a ‘topic’ or ‘theme’ indicated by WA.
But, as shown in Example (1), both particles are associated with various parts of the sentence, where GA does not necessarily indicate ‘subject’ and WA does not necessarily indicate subject, ‘topic’ or ‘theme’.

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[in Japanese]

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