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

Tue May 11 16:54:21 UTC 2021

Hello all,

First, thank you for all of your helpful comments and interest. I realize
that I probably under-described the phenomenon for fear of creating an
overly-long email and/or focusing on the aspects that the group may have
found irrelevant. I apologize ahead of time if I happen to do either of
those two things now.

Given the discussion, I believe that the clitic *=o* should be glossed as
either 'addressive' or 'exclamative'. I will provide a slightly fuller
picture of the language for any that may be interested.

There are two broad categories of clitics in Heyo: (i) subject pronominal
clitics, and (ii) phrase-final clitics. The subject pronominal clitics are
irrelevant to the discussion, so I won't talk about them any further. The
phrase-final clitics, as their name implies, occur at the end of whatever
phrase is relevant to their particular function. Within the phrase-final
clitics is the category of utterance-final clitics, of which the addressive
clitic *=o* is one.

Turning to phrase-final clitics in general, there are (formally speaking)
four different ones: *=i, =e, =o, *and *=u*. Somewhat interestingly, these
represent four of the five vowel phonemes of Heyo, with there being no
clitic **=a*. I provide a basic description of each of their functions
below. If the clitic in that function obligatorily occurs in
utterance-final position (i.e. is an utterance-final clitic), it appears in
bold.

*=i *-- (i) topic marker, (ii) attaches to 'when'/'if' subordinate
clauses, *(iii)
indicates scope of negation in certain clausal negation
constructions*, and *(iv)
indicates polar questions*
*=e* -- (i) contrastive topic marker, (ii) copula clitic attaching to third
person subjects (Heyo is SOV), (iii) attaches to verbs of speaking to
indicate following quoted speech, and *(iv) indicates positive imperatives*
*=o *-- *(i) the addressive form we're discussing*
*=u* -- *(i) indicates content questions*

In looking at those functions that occur in bold, each utterance-final form
indicates an illocutionary function. In my description I separate out many
of the functions in terms of where they are discussed in the grammar as
well as how I gloss them, despite many of them having the same form. I do
believe many, if not all, of the formally-identical clitics can be unified
into broader, more abstract grammatical categories. But I distinguish many
of them for purely descriptive reasons.

As some people were interested in the phonetic form of the addressive
clitic *=o*, I have attached a quickly-made spectrogram below along with
the pitch contour. In all instances of the clitic that I have seen, the
vowel is lengthened compared to other vowels in the utterance, and the
pitch contour is the same. In this particular instance of *boi=o* `hey
boy!' I measured the [oi] as being 166ms and the [o] as 222ms. This seems
like a significant distinction in time, but I am not particularly
well-versed in phonetic studies, I am afraid to admit.

There are other potentially interesting aspects of the addressive clitic,
such as how it has become somewhat morphologized with certain pronominal
stems. But I do not want to make this email overly-long. I am happy to
discuss things further if there is interest or some point needs to be
clarified. Once again, I thank you all for your comments, and I hope this
email finds you well.

Respectfully,

Thomas S. Diaz (He/Him)
PhD Candidate
Department of Linguistics
University at Buffalo (SUNY)

On Tue, May 11, 2021 at 10:57 AM Françoise Rose <
francoise.rose at univ-lyon2.fr> wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> in my database on categorical genderlects, there is indeed a number of
> languages where men and women used different forms for the type of
> morphemes that have been called in this thread vocatives and sentence-final
> particles used to emphasize the contact between speaker and addressee (just
> to repeat Arnold Zwicky’s formulation), or morphemes that do the two jobs.
> In more general terms, gender indexicality is often found in items encoding
> various type of (inter)subjectivity.
>
> I very much welcome data on gender indexicality in this domain (as well as
> in any other linguistic domain!).
>
> Best,
>
> Françoise
>
>
>
> PS. For those interested, a questionnaire on gender indexicality can be
> found online (http://tulquest.huma-num.fr/en/node/136) in English,
> French, Spanish or Portuguese.
>
>
>
>
>
> *De :* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> *De la part de*
> fcosw5
> *Envoyé :* mardi 11 mai 2021 09:52
> *À :* Gilles Authier <gilles.authier at gmail.com>
> *Cc :* Linguistic Linguistic Typology <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> *Objet :* Re: [Lingtyp] Fwd: Uncertainty over the use of the term
> "vocativ e" in this instance
>
>
>
> 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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