The notion of arbitrariness of the linguistic sign should not pervade the whole of language study. Language as social interaction involves most naturally, person, number, time and other categories, which often find linguistic expression. The four dimensions of the personal endings of the Greek verb (person, number, tense and voice) can be abstracted from the paradigm and explained as a natural, non-arbitrary result of the subjective centering of language around the speaker.
A critical review of various theories reveals the need to see the vocative in the context of the speech act and on the highest level of the monolog (and not on the sentence level) through a descending analysis. The vocative cannot be correctly understood in reductionist theories without speaker and addressee, which tend to ignore the vocative or to deny its status as a case. In line with these findings, a short but complete Latin text is analysed in a tagmemic framework.
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