Vocative

[Mulder-21]

I've often wondered about the case called the vocative.

As I understand it, it doesn't really have any grammatical functions, expect calling out for someone.

Danish, for example, only has a possesive genetive, while Faroese has both an possesive and a grammatical.

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.

Sincerely,

Johan Petur

[Fantastica]

> As I understand it, it doesn't really have any grammatical functions, except calling out for someone.


That is the point of the vocative, to indeed have that grammatical function, so far as I understood my training, is it not?

[Junesun]

The only function of the Vocative is to show that a person is called to. Classical Latin had a tiny bit of Vocative (just for words ending in -us, for the rest it was already the same as the Nominative). Modern Greek (and probably Ancient Greek as well) has the Vocative, too. I guess it didn't get carried into more modern European languages because there are few cases when it wouldn't be clear that a person is addressed.

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.

[Fenek]

I've often wondered about the case called the vocative.

As I understand it, it doesn't really have any grammatical functions, expect calling out for someone.

Yes, the vocative doesn't have any syntactical functions and that's why some linguists claim that the vocative is not a case but rather a separate grammatical form.

For example, according to the classic grammar, there are 7 cases in Polish (Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Instrumental, Locative, Vocative).
According to the revised grammar, there are 6 cases (Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Instrumental, Locative) and one more grammatical category named "appeal" (which corresponds to the Vocative).

Personally, I prefer the classic approach.

[T0MINH0]

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).

[DelBoy]

The vocative is still going strong in modern Irish! It basically involves putting the name into the genitive case, leniting it and sticking 'a' in front
(e.g. Seán -> "a Sheáin!"), although the genitive and the lenition arent used as much now because there are more and more foreign names being used in Ireland now which cant be lenited or put in the genitive, but the 'a' is still put in front when using the vocative (like Michelle -> a Michelle)

[darkina]

...what's 'lenition'???

[mind]

Vocative case is absent in normative modern Russian, but in spoken Russian Vocative is coming back. Personal names of the first declension (mostly diminutive forms) are often used with the final -а, -я omitted:
Саш! from Саша (dimin. of Alexander)
Тань! from Таня (dimin. of Tatyana), etc.

This form has nothing to do with the old Slavonic Vocative (Отче from отец), but it seems that the case is in demand now.

[leppie]

...what's 'lenition'???

changing a (beginning) consonant to an other (more or less related) one,
due to grammatical reasons.

In scottish gaelic: (DelBoy wrote about irish gaelic, but I guess
the foundamentals are the same).

Séan becomes a Shéan,
S in Séan is like sh in english (slender S)
in Shéan Sh is like ch in german...

Look at Daniel's page

[Maja]

Тань! from Таня (dimin. of Tatyana), etc.

Good to remember!

This form has nothing to do with the old Slavonic Vocative (Отче from отец), but it seems that the case is in demand now.

"otče" is vocative of "otec"?
In Slovene "oče" (father) is/has become(?) nominative. Btw, Slovene doesn't know vocative (any more???)

[DelBoy]

...what's 'lenition'???

Oops, I probably should have explained that! But Leppie's right anyway. I don't know about Scottish Gaelic, but in Irish lenition (or aspiration, or séimhiú) involves softening the sound of the beginning consonant of a word (by inserting a 'h' after it, or in older scripts by placing a dot above the letter) for various grammatical purposes, such as the vocative!

[darkina]

...what's 'lenition'???

Oops, I probably should have explained that! But Leppie's right anyway. I don't know about Scottish Gaelic, but in Irish lenition (or aspiration, or séimhiú) involves softening the sound of the beginning consonant of a word (by inserting a 'h' after it, or in older scripts by placing a dot above the letter) for various grammatical purposes, such as the vocative!

I see... can it be a bit like when in Russian accents change in the declination? (or consonants are dropped, but that's more a phonetic reason I think...)

[elgrande]

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.

Now that we're at it: Are there any languages where the nominative is commonly used after certain prepositions and in functions other than the ones normal in most languages?


In Esperanto, the nominative is frequently used after after prepositions, but as it is a conlang, I don't want to give this too much weight.

In Spanish, certain prepositions demand "subject" pronouns and not the ones usually used after prepositions (for example, "entre tú y yo" rather than "*entre ti y mi"), but those cases seem rare.

[mind]

"otče" is vocative of "otec"?
In Slovene "oče" (father) is/has become(?) nominative.

Yes, e.g., the first words of 'Pater noster, qui es in coelis' in the Old Church Slavonic are "Отче наш".

[mind]

Now that we're at it: Are there any languages where the nominative is commonly used after certain prepositions and in functions other than the ones normal in most languages?

There's a couple of nominative constructions in Latin: nominativus cum infinitivo and nominativus duplex. The latter has an analog in Russian, not in wide usage but still possible to find, especially in the writings of the XIX century authors:
"Итак, она звалась Татьяна"
Evgeny Onegin, by A.Pushkin

[Cécile]

Modern Greek (and probably Ancient Greek as well) has the Vocative, too.

>Yes, ancient greek has it.

[Maja]

"otče" is vocative of "otec"?
In Slovene "oče" (father) is/has become(?) nominative.

Yes, e.g., the first words of 'Pater noster, qui es in coelis' in the Old Church Slavonic are "Отче наш".

"Oče naš, ki si v nebesih...."
Now I just wonder how many Old-Slavonic vocatives came into Slovenian and became nominatives.

[T0MINH0]

"otče" is vocative of "otec"?
In Slovene "oče" (father) is/has become(?) nominative.

Yes, e.g., the first words of 'Pater noster, qui es in coelis' in the Old Church Slavonic are "Отче наш".

in Croatian:

N otac
V oče (''Oče naš koji jesi na nebesima...'')

OTAC is such a formal word in Croatian. It is almost never used. Compare to Brazilian Portuguese where we have the word PAI being very much used & alive.

[Aurelio]

Hi everybody!

Doubt that the 'vocative' will have any other meaning than being used to address people, things etc, at least in Indo-European languages.

From what I've read, the Indo-European vocative evolved from a different stress pattern when calling. [A-'mi-ke] from ['A-mi-ke] from ['A-mi-ko] (friend!) Later, the stress pattern was normalized but the weakend pronunciation of the final vowel was retained. Don't know how all that fits into the 'not emphatic but musical accent' that's supposed to have been the original accent in Indo-European. But in any case, it's because of a change in pronunciation, not because of fusion a little partical being added to the end of the word (like the 'm' in the accusative, for example).

Regards,
Aurelio

[avataar]

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’.

And indeed vocative is a more special case, if we decide to call it a case. Special because in languages with strong and very alive case systems it disappeared (roughly in 1/3 of the Slavonic languages), while in other Slavonic languages (Bulgarian and Macedonian) the case system completely died, but the vocative still lives happily ever after.

Now I just wonder how many Old-Slavonic vocatives came into Slovenian and became nominatives.

Probably not that many. Sometimes fixed expressions (keeping old cases, forms, etc.) replace the original basic form of a word. This is very true for things like prayers (oče naš...) which have remained unchanged for long time. In Bulgarian the word отец means only a church father nowadays, however it sounds very clergish and official. The vocative is отче (отче наш...) and this vocative jumped in the colloquial language and became a normal noun (the colloquial word for a church father). It has all forms normal nouns have: отче (а church father), отчето (the church father), отчета (church fathers), отчетата (the church fathers). I believe Slovenian oče might have followed a similar path, albeit much earlier in the past. Another example in Bulgarian is вкъщи (which used to be spelt в къщи some 20 years ago, = (at) home), from в (in) + къщи (a stale locative of къща, = house). Nowadays there are nice neologisms like от вкъщи (from home, as in coming from there) which transmogrified into English would give something like ‘from at home’ .