Le vocatif et la périphérie du système des cas: entre archaïsmes et innovations

Franck Floricic (1)

1 LPP - LPP - Laboratoire de Phonétique et Phonologie - UMR 7018

The aim of this paper is to account for the place and the properties of Vocatives in the linguistic system. A general sketch of the nature of Vocatives is first presented, in which it is suggested that the exclusion of Vocatives from the Case category is not justified. Then Vocatives are investigated, with special attention on the morphonology of Romance data. It is shown that Vocatives do not obey any prosodic minimality restriction; from this point of view, Vocatives pattern alongside with monosyllabic imperatives discussed in Floricic & Molinu (2009). Peripherality, it is suggested, is thus one of the most important features of Vocatives: Vocatives will be argued to be peripheral in the case system, a feature which is reflected as well in their exceptional phonological maked-up. Non-solidarity will thus be claimed to characterize Vocatives as a category, hence the possibility of its appearance or disappearance in such or such a language, regardless of the existence of the other cases

Mots clés: vocatif; langues romanes; mot minimal; centre; périphérie; système casuel

Domaines: Linguistique

Franck Floricic. Le vocatif et la périphérie du système des cas: entre archaïsmes et innovations. L'évolution grammaticale à travers les langues romanes, Peeters, pp.103-134, 2011, Mémoires de la Société de Linguistique de Paris. ⟨hal-00669362⟩