Cover not available

In:Perspectives on Language Structure and Language Change: Studies in honor of Henning Andersen
Edited by Lars Heltoft, Iván Igartua, Brian D. Joseph, Kirsten Jeppesen Kragh and Lene Schøsler
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 345] 2019
► pp. 381–394

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

Name-calling

The Russian ‘new Vocative’ and its status

 | UiT The Arctic University of Norway
Published online: 18 June 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.345.18jan
Abstract
Henning Andersen (2012) points out that the Russian “new Vocative” (e.g., мам! ‘mama!’, Саш! ‘Sasha!’) presents a series of unusual behaviors that set it apart from ordinary case marking. Andersen argues that the Vocative should not be considered a declensional word form of nouns. The Russian Vocative is certainly an uncommon linguistic category, but does this entail setting up a new transcategorial derivation? Similar restrictions are found in other markers that are generally recognized as case desinences. The pragmatic use of virile vs. deprecatory nominative plural markers in Polish and lexical and morphophonological restrictions on the “second Locative” in Russian. The restrictions found in the Vocative are certainly unusual, but no single one of them can be said to exclude a marker from being identified with a case, and one must ask what we gain by inaugurating new derivational types.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: What is a Vocative?
  • 2.The Russian “new Vocative” and its peculiarities
    • 2.1Pragmatic peculiarities
    • 2.2Lexical peculiarities
    • 2.3Syntactic peculiarities
    • 2.4Morphophonological peculiarities
    • 2.5Phonological peculiarities
  • 3.Similar peculiarities elsewhere in Russian and Slavic
    • 3.1Pragmatic peculiarities
    • 3.2Lexical peculiarities
    • 3.3Syntactic outliers
    • 3.4Morphophonological outliers
    • 3.5Phonological outliers
  • 4.The emergence of a “new Vocative” in North Saami
  • 5.Conclusions
  • References
References (36)
References
Abuladze, Lia & Andreas Ludden. 2013. The vocative in Georgian. In Barbara Sonnenhauser & Patrizia Noel Haziz Hanna (eds.), Vocative! Addressing between system and performance (= Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 261), 25–42. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Andersen, Henning. 2012. The new Russian vocative: Synchrony, diachrony, typology. Scando-Slavica 51. 122–167. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bentz, Christian & Bodo Winter. 2013. Languages with more second language learners tend to lose nominal case. Language Dynamics and Change 3. 1–27.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bethin, Christina Y. 2012. On Paradigm Uniformity and Contrast in Russian Vowel Reduction. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 30.2. 425–463. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Danièl’, Mikhail A. 2009. “Novyj” russkij vokativ: istorija formy usečennogo obraščenija skvoz’ prizmu korpusa pis’mennyx tekstov. In K. L. Kiseleva, V. A. Plungjan, E. V. Raxilina & S. G. Tatevosov (eds.), Korpusnye issledovanija po russkoj grammatike, 224–244. Moscow: Probel 2000.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Daniel, Michael and Andrew Spencer. 2009. The vocative – an outlier case. In Andrej Malchukov & Andrew Spencer (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Case, 626–634. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Endresen, Anna, Laura A. Janda, Robert Reynolds & Francis M. Tyers. 2016. Who needs particles? A challenge to the classification of particles as a part of speech in Russian. Russian Linguistics 40(2). 1–30. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Faulhaber, Susen, Thomas Herbst & Peter Uhrig. 2013. Funktionswortklassen im Englischen: linguistische und lexikografische Perspektiven. In Eva Breindl & Annette Klosa (eds.), Funktionswörter|buch|forschung: Zur lexikographischen Darstellung von Partikeln, Konnektoren, Präpositionen und anderen Funktionswörtern. Germanistische Linguistik 221–222, 59–110. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fink, Robert O. 1972. Person in nouns: Is the vocative a case? The American Journal of Philology 93. 61–68. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Floricic, Franck. 2011. Le vocative et la périphérie du système des cas: entre archaïsmes et innovations. Mémoires de la Société de Linguistique de Paris, Nouvelle Série Tome XIX: L’évolution grammaticale à travers les langues romanes. 103–134.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Friedman, Victor A. 1993. Macedonian. In Bernard Comrie & Greville G. Corbett (eds.), The Slavonic Languages, 249–305. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Girvin, Cammeron. 2013. Addressing changes in the Bulgarian vocative. In Barbara Sonnenhauser & Patrizia Noel Haziz Hanna (eds.), Vocative! Addressing between system and performance (= Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 261), 157–188. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Greenberg, Robert D. 1996. The Balkan Slavic Appellative. Munich: Lincom.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Herbst, Thomas & Susen Schüller. 2008. Introduction to Syntactic Analysis – A Valency Approach. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hill, Virginia. 2014. Vocatives. How Syntax Meets with Pragmatics (= Empirical Approaches to Linguistics Theory 5). Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Holden, Kyril T. 1978. Initial and final consonant clusters in Russian and English. Russian Language Journal 32 (112), 19–42.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Isačenko, Alexander. 1962. Die russische Sprache der Gegenwart. Formenlehre. Munich: Hueber.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jakobson, Roman O. 1971. Zur Struktur des russischen Verbums. In Roman Jakobson, Selected Writings. Vol. II, 3–15. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Janda, Laura A. 1993. A Geography of Case Semantics: The Czech Dative and the Russian Instrumental (= Cognitive Linguistics Research, v. 4). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1996. Back from the brink: A study of how relic forms in languages serve as source material for analogical extension. Munich: Lincom.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Janda, Laura A. & Steven J. Clancy. 2006. The Case Book for Czech. Bloomington, IN: Slavica.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Julien, Marit. 2014. Vokativar i norsk. Norsk Lingvistisk Tidsskrift 32. 130–165.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kiparsky, Valentin. 1967. Russische historische Grammatik. Vol. 2. Die Entwicklung des Formensystems. Heidelberg: Winter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lass, Roger. 1990. How to do things with junk: Exaptation in language evolution. Linguistics 26. 79–102. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Manning, C. D. 2011. Part-of-Speech Tagging from 97% to 100%: Is It Time for Some Linguistics? In Alexander Gelbukh (ed.), Computational Linguistics and Intelligent Text Processing, 12th International Conference, CICLing 2011, Proceedings, Part I. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 6608, 171–189.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McWhorter, John H. 2007. Language interrupted. Signs of non-native acquisition in standard language grammars. Oxford. Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2011. Linguistic simplicity and complexity: Why do languages undress? Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Plungjan, Vladimir A. 2002. K semantike russkogo lokativa (“vtorogo predložnogo padeža”). Semiotika i informatika 37. 229–254.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sonnenhauser, Barbara & Patrizia Noel Aziz Hanna. 2013. Introduction: Vocative! In: Barbara Sonnenhauser & Patrizia Noel Haziz Hanna (eds.), Vocative! Addressing between system and performance (= Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 261), 1–23. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Worth, Dean. 1983. Conditions on –á plural formation in Russian. Wiener slawistischer Almanak 11. 257–262.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1984. Russian GEN2, LOC2 Revisited. In Joost van Baak (ed.), Signs of Friendship. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ylikoski, Jussi. 2014. Davvisámegiela -ráigge – substantiiva, advearba, postposišuvdna vai kásus? Sámi dieđalaš áigecála 2014(2). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zwicky, Arnold. 1974. Hey, Whatsyourname. In Michael La Galy, Robert A. Fox & Anthony Bruck (eds.), Papers from the Tenth Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic Society. April 19-21, 1974, 787–801. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zwicky, Arnold M. 1985. Clitics and particles. Language 61(2). 283–305. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Janda, Laura A., Masako Fidler, Václav Cvrček & Anna Obukhova
2023. The case for case in Putin’s speeches. Russian Linguistics 47:1 ► pp. 15 ff. DOI logo
Nábělková, Mira
2019. “Here’s to you, dear Janko, on your birthday...” On the ways of addressing people in Slovak (and something over and above that). Journal of Linguistics/Jazykovedný casopis 70:3 ► pp. 627 ff. DOI logo
Floricic, Franck & Lucia Molinu
2018. Are Sardinian vocatives perfectly regular?. In Structuring Variation in Romance Linguistics and Beyond [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 252], ► pp. 271 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 6 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue