vocative? (zero vocative of Ru -a stems)

[Loren Billings]

Yes, two articles (that I know of) have approached the zero vocative in Modern
Russian from slightly different perspectives:

1.  Lillian Parrott wrote a paper in Olga T. Yokoyama, ed.,  _Harvard studies in
Slavic linguistics_ vol. 2 (I believe; I don't have that volume with me at the
moment), ca. 1993.  She also observes that there is non obstruent devoicing.

2.  Yadroff, Michael (1996) "Modern Russian vocatives: A case of subtractive
morphology." _Journal of Slavic linguistics_ 4:1, 133-153.  He proposes that
 this
isn't a zero inflection; rather, the NOM.SG form is taken and (unstressed) /-a/
 is
subtracted, leaving voiced final obstruents.

Best,  --Loren Billings

Richard Robin wrote:

> I've never heard that. But Russian has a very informal vocative -- at least as
> far as I have heard on a number of occasions: a zero-form:
>
> Mam!
> Ver!
> Ljub!
>
> etc.
>
> What's interesting is that the final stop in such forms do not always undergo
> devoicing. This seems to occur most often when the preceding vower is
> lengthened with a rising-falling vocative intonation similar to English (not
> one of Bryzgunova's 7 IKs), e.g. Lju-ub!
>
> Does anyone know of more systematic research on this issue? It's always
 puzzled
> me that this one form seems to produce a final voiced stop. Many years ago
 when
> I mentioned this in a graduate seminar, the professor suggested a final
> whispered vowel as a possible solution.

Loren A. Billings, Ph.D.
<loren.billings at colorado.edu>

Linguistics Department
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