In other cases there is not even a grammatical feature: a single phonetic form, in the manner of homonymy, represents two meanings which are usually distinguished by means of a linguistic form, as, singular and plural noun in ' the sheep' (grazes) : 'the sheep' (graze). Here the Hindus hit upon the apparently artificial but in practice eminently serviceable device of speaking of a 'zero element': in 'sheep' : 'sheep' the plural-suffix is replaced by 'zero' - that is by nothing at all.
- Bloomfield (1935), Pag. 209