Adnominal appellative particles and the vocative in languages with (seemingly) no m-case: a cross-linguistic study
Adnominal appellative particles and the vocative in languages with (seemingly) no m-case: a cross-linguistic study

Summary/Abstract: This article considers a sample of 99 languages that do not seem to display morphologically marked case (m-case) on nouns (or NPs) based on the sample in Iggesen (2013), where the vocative is not considered an m-case value. It focuses on two means of encoding that the ad- dressee’s attention is being attracted and/or maintained: adnominal appellative particles and the vocative. The hypothesis put forward is that, while the two sets of phenomena are very different, they have patterns in common: i. they both share restrictions vis-à-vis the types of nouns/NPs which they accompany/on which they are marked and ii. with both adnominal appellative particles and the vocative, these restrictions are generally of a lexical-semantic nature. After a brief overview of key notions, the article surveys the data from the sample and discusses them, noting observable patterns. Relevant conclusions are drawn and direc- tions for future research are mapped out.

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