Languages & Linguistics
Vocative Case
The vocative case is a grammatical case used to address or call out to someone or something. It is often marked by changes in the form of a noun or pronoun, and is commonly found in languages with inflectional morphology. The vocative case helps to indicate the person or thing being directly spoken to within a sentence.
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8 Key excerpts on "Vocative Case"
eBook - PDFVocative!
Addressing between System and Performance
- Barbara Sonnenhauser, Patrizia Noel Aziz Hanna, Barbara Sonnenhauser, Patrizia Noel Aziz Hanna(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Vocative and the grammar of calls Tore Janson Abstract Vocative forms appear in calls, which constitute a type of utterances; other types are statements, questions, and commands. Grammatical descriptions usually focus on sentences, the grammatical form of statements. This paper presents a sketch of the grammar of calls. The basic form of a call is a noun phrase denoting a person. Calls may include special marking to show the utterance type. There may be markers outside the noun phrase (utterance marking) or marking within the noun phrase (noun phrase marking). Some languages have one of the types and some have both. The types typically do not interfere but occur inde-pendently of each other. Utterance marking consists of special intonation or of an optional vo-calic particle. Noun phrase marking may consist of suppletion, contraction or apocope of the noun, or of addition of an affix. The noun then has a special vocative form. In languages with obligatory case marking, noun marking of calls and marking of case may interfere in complex ways. 1. The nature of the vocative The term ‘vocative’ occurs regularly in grammatical descriptions of various languages, but theoretically inclined linguists rarely use it. It does not even figure as an entry in standard handbooks such as Trask and Stockwell (2007), or even the 14-volume Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (Brown 2006). To see why this is so, one has to consider the history of the term. ‘Voca-tive (case)’ in English renders the Latin (casus) vocativus (which was in its turn originally translated from the Greek (ptosis) kletike ). The Latin term or its variants in modern languages has been employed in Latin grammars for a very long time, to denote certain forms of nouns and adjectives. The relevant categories for nominal inflection in Greek and Latin are gender, number and case, and vocative has been listed as one of the cases.
eBook - ePub- Andra Kalnaca(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Open Poland(Publisher)
Plungian (2011 , 178–179) for the historical analysis of these considerations).Nevertheless, the form and function of the vocative allow for this case to be considered an integral part of the noun case paradigm, instead of just a word formation phenomenon (for this viewpoint see Nau 2011 , 146).First of all, it should be emphasised that morphologically the vocative is not a form that would exist outside the paradigm (see Paulauskienė 1994 ; Kalnača 1999 ; Holvoet 2012 , 47). The vocative is connected with the rest of the cases by the common stem of the noun as well as the specific grammatical form whose main function is the naming of the message addressee (Plungian 2011 , 178). The vocative is the case used for calling someone or getting their attention (Matthews 1997 , 397) and its function in a language system is to attract the attention of a message addressee to specific information.A range of the vocative forms inherited from the Baltic and Indo-European proto-languages remain in use in Standard Latvian (1st, 4th, and 5th declensions). The vocative ending of these forms has been phonetically reduced due to the shortening of final syllables (Rudzīte 1993 , 181–184), i.e., the ending is a zero morpheme, for example (see also Table 1.5 , Section 1.2
eBook - ePubGoing Deeper with New Testament Greek, Revised Edition
An Intermediate Study of the Grammar and Syntax of the New Testament
- Andreas J. Köstenberger, Benjamin L Merkle, Robert L. Plummer(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- B&H Academic(Publisher)
51USES OF THE VOCATIVE Direct Address Direct Address
The most common use of the vocative in the NT involves the use of a substantive without the article to identify the person or thing that is being addressed.52• κύριε , ἐὰν θέλῃς δύνασαί με καθαρίσαι (Matt 8:2)Lord , if you are willing, you can make me clean• διδάσκαλε , ἤνεγκα τὸν υἱόν μου πρὸς σέ (Mark 9:17)Teacher , I brought my son to you• Λάζαρε , δεῦρο ἔξω (John 11:43)Lazarus , come out!In this case, the noun in the vocative is a proper name, Lazarus.• ἀναστάς , Πέτρε , θῦσον καὶ φάγε (Acts 10:13)Get up, Peter ; kill and eat!• σὺ δέ , ὦ ἄνθρωπε θεοῦ , ταῦτα φεῦγε (1 Tim 6:11)But as for you, O man of God, flee these things (ESV)ACCUSATIVE
The accusative case is the case of limitation or extension , delimiting the action of a verb. The accusative “measures an idea as to its content, scope, [or] direction.”53 You may visualize the function of the accusative as indicating “the point toward which something is proceeding” or “the space traversed in such motion or direction.”54 The most frequent idea conveyed by the use of the accusative thus essentially encompasses three elements: the end, direction, or extent of an action.55 In each case, the accusative limits the action. For example, Matthew 22:24 contains the clause, “his brother is to marry his wife” (ἐπιγαμβρεύσει ὁ ἀδελφὸς αὐτοῦ τὴν γυναῖκα αὐτοῦ ). The phrase “his brother is to marry” is completely open-ended, but “his brother is to marry his wife
eBook - PDF- Michael Meier-Brügger, Charles Gertmenian(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter(Publisher)
There is only a distinct vocative in the singular, and even then, not all nominal paradigms feature a separate vocative form. Where there is no vocative, its function is taken by the nominative. The same occurs when two actions of addressing are linked: While the first is in the vocative, the second is in the nominative. — Examples: Γ 276f. Ζεΰ πάτερ ... Ήέλιός θ' Oh father Zeus and Helios; RV 3, 25, 4 ágna indras ca Oh Agni and Indra Suggestions for further reading: —> Svennung Anredeformen 1958; Zwolanek Anrufungsformen 1970. 1) The vocative element in the sentence receives no accent. —Example: RV 1, 184, 2 asmé ü sú vrsanä mädayethäm Enjoy yourselves nicely, you two heroes, in our company. 2) In Old Indian, when the vocative forms a sentence of its own, and is thus in sentence-initial position, it receives stress, regardless of its normal nominal accent, on its first syllable, i.e. on the first syllable of the sentence. In this case, 20 Subjektprominenz in FS Stimm 1982 p. 270 266 Proto-Indo-European Syntax sentence stress is meant and not word stress. — Example: AV 19, 70, 1 dévâ fivata Gods! Live! S 407. Accusative The accusative has two apparently very different functions: On the one hand, it indicates the direct object in the case of transitive verbs (i.e. accu-sative object), on the other hand, it expresses that the verbal action bears an orientation in terms of space (i.e. directional accusative). The accusa-tive is further used to express spatial or chronological expanse (i.e. accu-sative of expanse). In addition, it expresses the relation of the verbal ac-tion to a referent in a non-spatial sense (relational accusative). Finally, the accusative is also used when the contents of a verb are additionally ex-pressed through a noun which appears in the accusative (i.e. accusative of contents): The technical term for this use of a substantive and a verb with the same lexical contents is figura etymologica.
eBook - PDF- Igor Mel'cuk, David Beck(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Therefore, following the syntactic pattern of Latin, the case which marks the Subject was called the nominative, while that which marks the DirO automatically got the name of the accusative. However, such a practice cannot be condoned for a number of reasons: first, the syntactic patterns of one language should not be mechanically transposed to another; sec-ond, and even more importantly, by linking the case of a noun N and the SSynt-role of N too rigidly we blur the extremely important distinction between cases and syntactic roles, thus blocking, among other things, the possibility of saying readily that, in a language L , a given SSynt-role can be marked by several differ-ent cases, while a given case can mark several different SSynt-roles. My solution is simple and drastic. It derives from the following definition of nominative case. Definition 4.1: Nominative Case In a language L with the inflectional category of case, the particular case (= case I.1b ) that marks the noun used to NAME an object or a situation – i.e., that marks a noun in isolation – must be called the nominative , whatever role it plays in the syntax of L and whatever its formal exponent (Chapter 2, 9 , p. 152; Mel’čuk 1986: 71). In other words, I propose to restore to the nominative its etymological meaning: ( the case of naming ) . If this proposal is accepted, then Maasai (like all related languages) has two cases: the nominative , the former ‘accusative’) and the oblique (or else erga-tive or subjective ), the former ‘nominative’). 7 The resulting two-case system is 268 Chapter 4. Case, basic verbal construction, and voice in Maasai typologically highly plausible: it is similar, for instance, to that of Kabardian/ Circassian, Kurdish or Old French. With this new terminology, the description of the use of cases in Maasai ceases to be exotic and becomes quite ordinary.
eBook - PDF- Lilia Schürcks, Anastasia Giannakidou, Urtzi Etxeberria, Lilia Schürcks, Anastasia Giannakidou, Urtzi Etxeberria(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
In (36) we further see that the order particle
eBook - PDF- Wolfgang U. Dressler, Martin Prinzhorn, John R. Rennison, Wolfgang U. Dressler, Martin Prinzhorn, John R. Rennison(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
136 Igor Mel'cuk 1.3. The proposal: changing names As far as I can judge, the difficulty here arose, in the first place, because the founders of African linguistics chose to apply case names according to the case's main syntactic function. So, following the syntactic pattern of Latin, the case whose main function is to mark the Grammatical Sub-ject was called the nominative, while that which marks the Direct Object automatically got the name of the accusative. However, such a practice cannot be condoned for at least two reasons. First the syntactic patterns of one language should not be mechanically transposed to another. Se-cond, and even more importantly, by linking too rigidly the case and the Surface-Syntactic role we blur the extremely important distinction be-tween them, thus blocking, among other things, the possibility of saying readily that, in a language L, a given syntactic role can be marked by several different cases, while a given case can mark several different syn-tactic roles. My solution is simple and drastic. It derives from the following defini-tion of nominative case: Nominative Case In a language L that has grammatical cases, the case used to NAME ob-jects or situations, i. e. to mark a noun in isolation, must be called the nominative, whichever role it plays in the syntax of L and whichever is its formal exponent (Mel'cuk 1986: 71). In other words, I propose to restore to the nominative its etymological meaning: the case of nomination. If this proposal is accepted, then Maasai (like all related languages) has two cases: the nominative (the former accusative) and the oblique (or else ergative or subjective; the former nominative). 6 The resulting two-case system is typologically highly plausible: it is sim-ilar, for instance, to that of Kabardian/Circassian, Kurdish or Old French. With this new terminology, all the statements concerning the use of cases in Maasai cease to be exotic and become quite plausible.
eBook - PDF- Olga Kagan(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
Further, for some cases, English counterparts with such functional elements as prepositions or inflectional suffixes are provided. The last three cases are highly restricted in their distribution and are therefore illustrated with a different noun, with which they are compatible. Note that the comitative case is gen- erally accompanied by a possessive suffix, e.g. -ni ‘my’ in taloineni above. Among particularly rich case systems is the one found in Kayardild, a language spoken in Australia, which is reported to contain twenty-one cases. These are divided by Evans (1995) into so-called nominal and verbal cases. The latter provide the original noun with verbal properties, as a result of which it agrees with the (main) verb in such features as tense, mood and polarity. This is illustrated in the following example from Evans (1995:162), where the phrase that cave is marked with past tense. (See Evans 1995 and Round 2009 for more information on the Kayardild case system.) (18) ngada warra-jarra dathin-kiiwa-tharra ngilirr-iiwa-tharr 1 sg.nom go pst that vall.pst cave vall.pst ‘I went to that cave.’ Table 1.1 Ukrainian case system (the noun kniga ‘book’) Case Form Function Parallels with English functional elements nominative kniga subject accusative knigu object genitive knigi possessor a/the book’s dative knizi indirect object to a/the book instrumental knigoju instrument with a/the book locative knizi with some prepositions vocative knigo addressee 16 1 introduction 1.4.2 Ergative and Accusative Languages In addition to the number (as well as existence versus non-existence) of morphological case distinctions, languages differ in terms of mor- pho-syntactic alignment, a system that distinguishes (or unifies) the arguments of transitive and intransitive verbs. Consider the following three types of arguments: the subject of a transitive verb, the object of a transitive verb and the subject of an intransitive verb.
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