Vocative, where do you hang out inwh-interrogatives?

Abstract

This paper provides new insights into the analysis of vocative structures that co-occur with a sentence by bridging two previously independent domains of linguistic research: wh-interrogatives and vocatives. More specifically, we investigate in which positions Spanish speakers accept vocatives in wh-interrogatives introduced by different wh-phrases. The results of an acceptability judgment task indicate that our participants highly accept initial and final vocatives in all wh-interrogatives. For middle vocatives, the results differ across wh-phrases. While the participants accept middle vocatives in wh-interrogatives introduced by por qué (‘why’) and d-linked wh-phrases, they reject them in bare wh-interrogatives. These findings require a modification of the syntactic analysis of vocatives. Initial vocatives are placed above ForceP, while middle and final vocatives are analyzed in two different positions, in an upper and a lower VocaddrP in the left periphery.

Vocative Intonation in Language Contact: The Case of Bulgarian Judeo-Spanish

“…The term vocative derives from the Latin noun vocatīvus, which, in turn, goes back to the verb vocāre 'to invoke, call, name a person or thing personified' (see González López and Schmid 2023). Vocatives were characterized from different perspectives: (i) morphosyntactically (i.e., according to their belonging to a class of words and phrases and with respect to their positional mobility), (ii) semantic-pragmatically (i.e., regarding their meaning, primordial functions, and speaker-listener relationship), and (iii) phonologically (i.e., with respect to their intonational properties).…”