Vocative

[Fenek]

So, I wanted to ask, if any (or all?) language using the vocative, has some grammatical function, e.g. prepositional governmentation or similar, which requires the vocative.

In colloquial Polish the vocative form is sometimes used instead of the nominative.

Krzysiu / Jasiu / Kiesiu to dobry chłopak.
Krzysio / Jasio / Kiesio is a good lad.
Ten gościu przyszedł.
That guy came.

But this is restricted to some masculine nouns. Moreover, this only occurs in some regions of Poland.

[Fenek]

I remember a joke that can serve as example: a teacher gave his class the following sentence and asked them to add the punctuation: "Woman without her man is nothing". The boys re-wrote it as: "Woman, without her man, is nothing.". The girls re-wrote it as: "Woman! Without her, man is nothing.". In the second sentence, "woman" would have to be in the Vocative, whereas in the first sentence it would have to be in the Nominative. A language that distinguishes between Nominative and Vocative would always be able to tell which of the two interpretations of this sentence was meant.

That's not a good example. What you put in vocative can't be in 3rd person (‘her’). It sounds just like talking to someone and using he/she/him/her instead of you .
Compare: ‘Hey woman, without you, the man is nothing’ with ‘The woman--without her, the man is nothing’.

avatarbg is right. Cases can help to make a distinction between those sentences. But it's not because of the vocative, it's because the word "man" is in different cases in those sentences.

[Liisi]

There is vocative in Lithuanian, too. When you talk to a man called, for example, Vytautas, you say 'Vytautai'. You have to use vocative not only in proper names but also titles with them. All kinds of nouns can have vocative, at least in poetry... I think this is a nice and interesting aspect of language, but not absolutely necessary .

[ego]

Reviving an old thread.

Ancient Greek used the vocative widely and had many cases of irregular vocative, especially for very common words like "woman", "child" etc. Yet mostly masculine nouns had the vocative, just like in Modern Greek. There was no plural vocative and no vocative for neuter words as well.
Modern Greek uses the vocative too but less than ancient. Actually only masculine nouns have vocative. All masculine words have vocative, which is often identical to the accusative (formed simply by omiting the final -s: Thanasis --> Thanasi). The only pattern that has a totally distinctive vocative is the words in -os (a great part of the nouns, all participles and the vast majority of the adjectives belong there). These words form the vocative in -e:

Αλέξανδρος --> Αλέξανδρε (Alexander). Same was in ancient Greek.

The vocative is still strong in modern Greek and very rarely omited. Sometimes it's considered abrupt and agressive and then people use the nominative instead (colloquially only), but these cases are few. Modern Greek lacks irregular vocative.

I think the vocative is a real case with a clear grammatical function and unlike what many people think, it's very useful. I remember once I wanted to call a Turkish friend "enamorado" in Turkish. Turkish has no vocative so I simply said aşık! My Turkish friend did not realize that was vocative and he asked "are you?" (in love). If there was a vocative form it would be clear I was calling him "in love"

[Oleksij]

Ukrainian has preserved the vocative case too, although it's very often omitted in colloquial language. However, in official use, it's never dropped and still remains the 7th official case of noun declenation (they're the same as in Polish, basically)

My name "Олексій" [oleksíj] would be "Олексію" [oleksíju] in vocative.

[Loiks]

Also Latvian has vocative in male words ending with -s, it just disappears: Aivars (nom.) - Aivar (voc.)

Estonian has started to form some kind of vocative of the word kuule 'listen!'. Like with my name: "Lauri, kuule!" [laurigule].

[0stsee]

I just realized that Indonesian has "vocative" which is alive and well.
It has to be one syllable. So no matter how long the word may be, it will always be reduced to one syllable.

Some examples with people's names:
Sandra => San!
Michael (Maykel) => Mike! (Mayk!)
Sarah => Sar!
Laura => Lor!
Éllen => Él! or Len!
Péter => Pit! or Ter!
Catur => Tur! or Cat!
Satria => Sat!
Yohannes => Nes!
Maureen (Morin) => Mor!
Daniél => Dan!
Yusuf => Sup!
Ibrahim => Him!
Dini => Din!
Alfa => Fa!
Déb(o)ra(h) => Déb!

Some nouns:
Bapak => Pak!
Ibu => Bu!
Tante => Tan!
Anak => Nak!
Nona => Non!
Kakak => Kak!
Adik => Dik! or Dék!
Abang => Bang!

This is done consequently and using more than one syllable when calling sounds quite unusual.

[Travis B.]

I just realized that Indonesian has "vocative" which is alive and well.
It has to be one syllable. So no matter how long the word may be, it will always be reduced to one syllable.

[snip]

This is done consequently and using more than one syllable when calling sounds quite unusual.

Are you sure these are not hypocoristics of some sort or another? For instance, in everyday usage, very many names in English are actually used as hypocoristics, such as Katie or Kate from Katherine. In particular, with a name where one normally uses a hypocoristic rather than its formal form, to use a formal form where a hypocoristic would be expected in addressing someone is generally done either in particularly formal contexts or to express disapproval. Hence it is rare to normally address many individuals using formal forms of their names when commonly used hypocoristics are available in English.

[0stsee]

The shortened forms in Indonesian are also used in formal situations.

For example "Bapak", which literally means "father", but also used to address an unknown adult male you respect.
If you say "Excuse me, Sir.", then you'd say "Permisi, Pak." instead of "Permisi Bapak.". You can say the latter but only in particular situations, like when you have told him that for the third time and he still hasn't listened (in which case it may even sound a bit rude), or simply for extra emphasis, which is usually unnecessary.

As for the names, you do usually use them when you know the person personally, but also in such case, the use of vocative is the norm. Saying "Menurutmu bagaimana Satria?" instead of "Menurutmu bagaimana Sat?" (="What do you think, Satria?") sounds very unusual, I can't even remember a native speaker talking like that except in jokes perhaps.

[nighean-neonach]

The English (well, rather Scottish) male name Hamish is actually a Gaelic vocative form: The original Gaelic name is Seumas (itself the Gaelic version of James), the vocative of which is "a Sheumais" - and that's just how Hamish is pronounced by Scottish speakers (with a rather long /e/).

[Aleco]

The only vocative word we have in Norwegian, is "folkens", which is used to adress a "flock" of people.

folk + en + s
people + German plural marker + s

The German plural marker came through the sailors, but I have no idea where the s came from.

And unofficially, more colloquial, the definitie plural marker for neuter nouns (+ more), -a, can be used as vocative for plural things, which can use that marker in the plural definite form.
- gutta! (hey, boys!)
- dyra! (hey, animals!)
- folka (hey, people! (the same as "folkens"))

[Krvoje]

Vocative is becoming obsolete in modern Croatian being replaced by Nominative so

one calls for a waiter -KONOBAR!? (KONOBARU!? sounds dated and/or regional)

Likewise, if we want to talk to Ana we will call her: -ANA!? (ANO!? sounds very weird).

This is not true.
Except in Kajkavian dialects, where vocative is equal to nominative (like in Slovene), and it isn't a modern phenomenon. It's a dialect trademark.

Indeed, i.e. in Zagreb (where I'm from), if a person is called "Maja", we wouldn't address her "Majo!" (which is vocative), but "Maja!", while in štokavian parts it would most certainly be "Majo!"

In remaining dialects, vocative is alive and well

And beside the grammatical use, it has a poetic quality, esp. when used with inanimate nouns, while describing one's homeplace for example, or anything that left an emotional impact. It posseses quite some temperament

Like in Gaelic, there are also vocative variants of names in Croatian

[kibo]

So, I wanted to ask, if any (or all?) language using the vocative, has some grammatical function, e.g. prepositional governmentation or similar, which requires the vocative

In Serbian (Serbo-Croatian, BCMS) the vocative case indeed doesn't have a syntactic function and it doesn't belong to the structure of the sentence. But there is one peculiar usage of the vocative form in epic poetry. Since the verses in our epic poems consist out of 10 syllables, putting the subject in the vocative instead of the nominative case is one way of getting an extra syllable where necessary. Vino pije Kraljeviću Marko instead of Vino pije Kraljević Marko. Kad se ženi srpski kralj Stjepane instead of Kad se ženi srpski kralj Stjepan. Note that in the latter example only Stjepan is put in the vocative case and not the kralj too (normally they would both have to be in the same case) since that would make it 11 syllables and not 10. This is highly restricted to this kind of usage (in epic poetry or poetry that wants to look like epic poetry ) and doesn't happen elsewhere.

After prepositions only dependent cases (those that aren't nominative and vocative) can come.