[Lingtyp] Vocative markers expressing distance

[Alice Gaby]

Many thanks to everyone who responded to Alan Ray and my request for data
on vocative markers that express a distance distinction. Alan's summary is
attached here, and also pasted below.

Best wishes,
Alice

Responses re distance distinctions in vocatives.
I would like to express my deep thanks to all who provided comment and
data. Here is a
summary of the responses and some commentary.
1 / Harold Koch (ANU) pointed out that for Kaytetye, where all words end in
/e/ = schwa,
he analyses two “distortions” as: -aye address = vocative ‘hey you!’ and
-awe exclamative
‘hey, its X!’
Additionally, he thought some South Australian languages have a clitic =yV
in this function.
and that Arandic may have borrowed or inherited this, but with all final
vowels neutralised
to schwa, or [a] when stressed], they reanalysed ..a=yV as =aye and
generalised this form
with inherent stressed /a/.
2/ Peter Austin (Humboldt Fellow) pointed out the pattern in Diyari, which
is to distort the
final syllable of words when shouting by adding -ayi or -awu, as in:
wilhapinayi! “Hey, old
lady” or wilhapinawu! “Hey old lady” (root wilhapina ‘old woman’). You can
do this with
pronominal/demonstrative elements too, e.g. nhawuparrawu! “It’s this one!”
(Shouted).
Note that a final u or i vowel is replaced by ayi or awu in shouted forms.
He doesn’t think
there’s any distance difference between the alternative forms. His opinion
is that this
phenomenon is phonological rather than grammatical (i.e. not a locative
case), pointing out
that the phenomenon is also found in demonstratives and locative nominals
and may be
related to an emphatic form of the imperative.
Peter also pointed to Hercus' grammar of Arabana-Wangkangurru which has a
similar
pattern, e.g. mathapurtawu! “Hey, old man”. His view is to consider these
as "areal
features" that don't involve borrowing but are probably due to
multilingualism and sharing
of common ways of speaking. He is unaware of anything similar in the WA
languages he
is familiar with.
AR comment on 1 and 2: the (V)y(V) is more widespread than SA and Arandic.
There seems to be a question as to how much of these forms are morphology
vs distortion or
prosody. Also the awV form is found in various languages, often in tandem
with the ayV
form but generally with more of an exclamatory / emphatic sense than
vocative. It seems
that in Diyari at least this distinction does not exist. The extent of
borrowing and
phonological change needs to be explored.
3/ Nick Enfield (University of Sydney) referred to a suggestion by Tanya
Stivers (now at
UCLA) that there are two distinct prosodic profiles in English for calling
out to someone by
name: ‘Alice!’ 1. Means ‘Hey Alice!’ 2. Means ‘Hey Alice for the second
time because the
first time you didn’t respond!’ such that if you didn’t hear the first one
at all, you could tell
by how this one sounds that it’s being done ‘for a second time’. He was
unsure if the
prosodic distinction had been defined but this could be a useful avenue to
explore.
Also, he suggested checking whether volume was a necessary feature in the
Wik
Mungkan case, as seems possible elsewhere.
AR comment: Alas, there is no evidence either way on volume or prosody in
the Wik-
Mungkan resources I have available.
4/ Stef Spronck (University of Helsinki) has noticed some variation in
Ngarinyin vocatives
as well, which he thought related to various degrees of urgency when
drawing someone’s
attention, but had not appreciated that the semantic distinctions in
vocatives might be
more systematic.
AR comment: I look forward to finding out more on this.
5/ Frans Plank (Oxford) suggested looking at vocative chants as well and
helpfully
provided a list of references.
AR comment: definitely needs to be looked into and many thanks for the
extensive reference list.

The remaining input concerned non-Australian languages and shows that at
least two-way
distance distinctions (i.e. proximal / distal) occur in genetically and
geographically diverse
languages.
6/ Laura Arnold (University of Edinburgh) described a two-way distance
distinction in
Ambel (Austronesian > South Halmahera-West New Guinea); e is the vocative
particle
used over short distances, and u is used over greater distances.
7/ Grant Aiton (ANU College of Asia and the Pacific) said that Eibela
(Trans-New Guinea)
also has a proximal vs. distal vocative contrast. Proximal vocative suffix
is -ja:, while distal
vocative is -jo:.
8/ Joseph Brooks (USC, Santa Barbara) pointed to the example of Chini (Ramu
family,
PNG) which has a proximal vocative =ga and a distal vocative =i, which only
attach to
people's names. There is a vocative =ma as well which attaches to pronouns
does not
distinguish distance.
9/ Ellen Basso, University of Arizona Department of Anthropology, provided
data from
Kalapalo, Southern Cariban (Brazil) which has a three way distance
distinction in the
pronominal paradigm.
10/ Liu Danqing (Danny) of the Institute of Linguistics, Chinese Academy of
Social
Sciences, provided the following:
In some Gan dialects (spoken in Jiangxi Province) of Chinese, there is
vocative case with
distinction between proximal and distal addressees.
In the Anfu Gan dialect, the proximal vocative suffix is -e (after a stem
ending with i) or -a
(for other stems) while the distal one is ei (after a stem ending with i)
or -o (for others
stems). For details, see Hu and Lei's paper published in Chinese in Yuyan
Yanjiu (Studies in Language and Linguistics)， 2018， Vol.38-3.

The Yujiang Gan dialect is similar case; see Danny's paper in Chinese in
Hanyu Xuexi (Chinese Language Learning) 2012:3.
-- 
Alice Gaby
Associate Professor of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
<http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/graduate-research-programs/linguistics-and-applied-linguistics-program/>
School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics
Monash University
Victoria 3800
Australia

Ph: +61 (0)3 9902 4169  |  Fax: +61 (0)3 9905-5437  |  E:
Alice.Gaby at monash.edu
Visit: W503, 20 Chancellors Walk (formerly: Menzies Building)
https://sites.google.com/monash.edu/alice-gaby

-----
I acknowledge the Elders (past, present, emerging) and Owners of the
unceded lands on which Monash University operates.
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