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

Tue May 11 08:49:05 UTC 2021

Hi All,
Stephen is correct that there is a particle, or whatever you want to call it, ʔa in spoken Mandarin (and to some extent in other Sinitic varieties) that is used for both vocative and utterance-final emphatic uses. It is not generally talked about as a grammatical marker like a vocative case, but just an optional pragmatic marker for emphasis. It can appear within the utterance intonation unit or in the case of making sure someone is paying attention and has registered what you just said, particularly when giving advice or an order, it can appear stressed and in an intonation unit by itself.

Sorry I don’t have natural examples to hand. A proper study should be done of the conditions for its use.

Randy
-----
Randy J. LaPolla, PhD FAHA （羅仁地）
Professor of Linguistics, with courtesy appointment in Chinese, School of Humanities 
Nanyang Technological University
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> On 11 May 2021, at 3:51 PM, fcosw5 <fcosw5 at scu.edu.tw> wrote:
> 
> 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 <mailto:gilles.authier at gmail.com>>
> To:Arnold M. Zwicky<zwicky at stanford.edu <mailto:zwicky at stanford.edu>>
> Cc:Linguistic Linguistic Typology<lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <mailto: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 <mailto: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 <mailto: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 <mailto:tsdiaz at buffalo.edu>>
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On May 10, 2021, at 11:11 AM, Thomas Diaz <tsdiaz at buffalo.edu <mailto: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 <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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