[Lingtyp] Fwd: Uncertainty over the use of the term "vocativ e" in this instance

fcosw5 fcosw5 at scu.edu.tw
Tue May 11 07:51:57 UTC 2021


There seems to be a somewhat similar element in at least Mandarin Chinese.  I've noticed that the suffix (?) -a tends to be attached to various words -- not only nouns, but e.g. adverbs (`dui-a' = `that's right!') -- apparently to highlight them.

(I have sometimes wondered if this usage is more prevalent in women's speech than in men's.)

Best,
Steven

-----Original message-----
From:Gilles Authier<gilles.authier at gmail.com>
To:Arnold M. Zwicky<zwicky at stanford.edu>
Cc:Linguistic Linguistic Typology<lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Date: Tue, 11 May 2021 12:32:45
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Fwd: Uncertainty over the use of the term "vocative" in this instance
Hi,


A similarly ambiguous morph is found in Georgian: 

- vocative 'case' -o 

- clause final quotative =o

GA

On Tue, May 11, 2021 at 1:06 AM Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
meant to go to the list, not just to Thomas Diaz:



Begin forwarded message:


From: Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Uncertainty over the use of the term "vocative" in this instance
Date: May 10, 2021 at 1:30:25 PM PDT
To: Thomas Diaz <tsdiaz at buffalo.edu>


On May 10, 2021, at 11:11 AM, Thomas Diaz <tsdiaz at buffalo.edu> wrote:

Hello all,

I am writing a grammatical description of a language called Heyo, a Torricelli language spoken in northwestern Papua New Guinea, for my dissertation. I have come across a clitic =o that I am not sure what to call. I am currently calling/glossing it as a vocative, as it can serve a vocative function as in the two following examples.

boi=o!
boy=VOC
'hey, boy!'

Tawaks=o!
tawaks=VOC
'hey, Tawaks!'
Not just a vocative function, but one of the two types of vocative function: it's a call, rather than an address. These are the terms from my article "Hey, Whatsyourname!" in CLS 10 (1974), available on-line in  https://web.stanford.edu/~zwicky/hey-whatsyourname.pdf (The distinction is made by Schegloff 1968, under the names "summons" vs. "term of address".) From my 1974 paper: Calls are designed to catch the addressee's attention, addresses to maintain or emphasze the contact between speaker and addressee.` But this doesn't speak to your larger problem, namely how to classify, characterize the meaning/function of, and name the clitic =o! You seem to be assuming that it is (basically, in some sense of "basically") an adnominal clitic with call function, but can be used attached to verbs (or, perhaps, attached sentence-finally, or clause-finally) with some related function. But maybe it should be treated as a sentence-final clitic with an attention-getting function ('listen to this!'). Or other imaginable possibilites (even that there are two homophonous clitics here, related only historically). All that's for you to work out. Arnold

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