Vocatives: A Note on Addressee Management

Gerhard Schaden (1)

1 STL - Savoirs, Textes, Langage (STL) - UMR 8163

The aim of this paper is to establish a semantic characterisation of vocatives, while leaving aside pragmatic and sociolinguistic considerations as far as possible. I will defend the 'IPA-hypothesis' of the meaning of vocatives, that is, the hypothesis that vocatives have three basic functions: to identify the addressee(s), to predicate something on the addressee(s), and to activate the addressee(s). It will be argued that the traditional call vs. address dichotomy is insufficient.

Domaines: Linguistique

Gerhard Schaden. Vocatives: A Note on Addressee Management. Penn Linguistics Colloquium, 2009, United States. Article 20, pp. 176-185. ⟨hal-00672368⟩