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E. Vocatives
1. Definitions of Vocatives
According to Levinson 1983: 71, vocatives are noun phrases that refer to the addressee, but are not syntactically or semantically incorporated as the arguments of a
predicate; they are rather set apart prosodically from the body of a sentence that may accompany them. Meanwhile, Huang 2007: 143 shares the same idea. According to
him, vocatives are “NPs that refer to the addressee, but form no part of the arguments of a predicate.” The function of the vocative is to address an individual and to get his
or her attention. This function is clearly a matter of discourse which is why the vocative is located in pragmatics, the study of language use.
From the points of view above, it can be concluded that vocatives include noun phrases which can stand separately from their utterance and function both to get
the addressee’s attention and to address the addressee. Zwicky 1974 distinguished two types of vocatives: calls and addresses.
Calls are designed to catch the addressee’s attention, while addresses maintain or emphasize the contact between speaker and addressee Zwicky, 1974: 787.
According to Levinson 1983: 71, calls or summonses are naturally utterance-initial, indeed conversation-initial and can be thought of as independent speech acts in their
own right. Calls usually occur at the utterance-initial position. Addresses are
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parenthetical and can occur in the sorts of locations that other parentheticals can occupy. They usually occur at non-utterance initial positions.
In short, the experts agree that calls or summons function to get the addressee’s attention and they usually occur at the utterance-initial position.
Moreover, the experts also share the same idea that addresses, which usually occur at non-utterance initial positions, function to maintain the contact between the speaker
and the addressee. The examples of calls or summonses can be seen below
a. Hey you, out from this place
b. George, if we don’t get a bus immediately, we’ll be late for school.
c. Professor William, Would you please explain me more about the formula?
While the examples of addresses are a.
I’m afraid, sweetie, I have to leave now. b.
Would you do me a favor, Anne? c.
My suggestion, Dean, is that our cheerleading team should not be sent to national championship.
The examples above explain three points. Firstly, calls or summons, being gestural in nature, are utterance-initial; addresses, on the other hand, being symbolic
in character, are parenthetical, and can occur wherever other parentheticals can occur. This means that calls or summonses are placed before the utterance, while addresses
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can be inserted in the utterances. The second point to note is that while all addresses can be used as calls or summonses, only some calls or summonses can be used as
addresses Zwicky 1974, Levinson 1983: 70-1. The call “hey you” in the utterance “Hey you, out from this place”, for example, can not be used in the address. Finally,
as shown in the examples above, vocatives are in general socially marked. This means vocatives may express wide variety features of the discourse situation.
2. Kubo’s Speech Act Theoretic Analysis of Vocatives
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