Vocative case
Here is, for example, the Indo-European word for "wolf" in various languages: The elements separated with hyphens denote the stem, the so-called thematic vowel of the case and the actual suffix.
All final consonants were lost in Proto-Slavic, so both the nominative and vocative Old Church Slavonic forms do not have true endings, only reflexes of the old thematic vowels.
Most[citation needed] modern Slavic languages that retain the vocative case have altered the ending to avoid the change: Bulgarian вълко occurs far more frequently than вълче.
In addition, masculine nouns are slenderized if possible (that is, in writing, an 'i' is inserted before the final consonant) This also changes the pronunciation of the word.
Welsh lacks case declension but marks vocative constructions by lenition of the initial consonant of the word, with no obligatory particle.
That is also the case in traditional English (without the accent) (see above): The native words sonur 'son' and vinur 'friend' also sometimes appear in the shortened forms son and vin in vocative phrases.
[5]: 116 In several Norwegian dialects, north of an isogloss running from Oslo to Bergen, names in argument position are associated with proprial articles, e.g. gendered pronouns such as han 'he' or hun 'she', which either precede or follow the noun in question.
However, the accusative case is often used as a vocative in informal speech for a limited number of nouns, and always used for certain modern Greek person names: "Έλα εδώ, Χρήστο" "Come here, Christos" instead of "...Χρήστε".
Old Church Slavonic has a distinct vocative case for many stems of singular masculine and feminine nouns, otherwise it is identical to the nominative.
Vocative phrases like господине министре (Mr. Minister) have been almost completely replaced by nominative forms, especially in official writing.
It can be felt as rude, discourteous or uncultivated, or as familiar, and is associated also with Slovakian influence (from the Czechoslovak Army) or Russian.
[14] In informal speech, it is common (but grammatically incorrect[15]) to use the male surname (see also Czech name) in the nominative to address men: pane Novák!
More examples of the historic vocative can be found in other Biblical quotes that are sometimes used as proverbs: "Врачу, исцелися сам" (Vraču, iscelisia sam, "Physician, heal thyself", nom.
In modern colloquial Russian, given names and a small family of terms often take a special "shortened" form that some linguists consider to be a re-emerging vocative case.
In addition to given names, the form is often used with words like "мама" (mom) and "папа" (dad), which would be respectively shortened to "мам" and "пап".
All other nouns in this class form the vocative with -u: gospodar : gospodaru 'master', pastir : pastiru 'shepherd', inženjer : inženjeru 'engineer', pisar : pisaru 'scribe', sekretar : sekretaru 'secretary'.
In particular, masculine nouns ending with a palatal or prepalatal consonant j, lj, nj, č, dž, ć, đ or š form vocatives with the -u suffix: heroj : heroju 'hero', prijatelj : prijatelju 'friend', konj : konju 'horse', vozač : vozaču 'driver', mladić : mladiću 'youngster', kočijaš : kočijašu 'coachman', muž : mužu 'husband'.
Nouns ending with the velars -k, -g and -h are palatalized to -č, -ž, -š in the vocative: vojnik : vojniče 'soldier', drug : druže 'comrade', duh : duše 'ghost'.
The loss of the unsteady a can trigger a sound change by hardening consonants, as in vrabac : vrapče 'sparrow' (not *vrabče), lisac : lišče 'male fox' (not *lisče) and ženomrzac : ženomršče 'misogynist' (not *ženomrzče).
When these phonetic alterations would substantially change the base noun, the vocative remains equal to the nominative, for example tetak 'uncle', mačak 'male cat', bratac 'cousin'.
Male names ending with -o and -e have a vocative equal to the nominative, for example: Marko, Mihailo, Danilo, Đorđe, Pavle, Radoje.
These nouns have a vocative suffix -o: riba : ribo 'fish', sluga : slugo 'servant', kolega : kolego 'colleague', poslovođa : poslovođo 'manager'.
Exemptions to this rule are male and female given names, which have a vocative equal to the nominative, e. g. Vera, Zorka, Olga, Marija, Gordana, Nataša, Nikola, Kosta, Ilija etc.
Nouns ending with the diminutive suffix -ica that consist of three or more syllables have a vocative with -e: učiteljica: učiteljice "female teacher", drugarica: drugarice "girlfriend", tatica: tatice "daddy", mamica: mamice "mommy".
Classical Latin did not use a vocative of deus either (in reference to pagan gods, the Romans used the suppletive form dive).
Like English, French sometimes uses (or historically used) a particle Ô to mark vocative phrases rather than by change to the form of the noun.
Masculine names and other nouns lack articles and so rely on prosody to mark forms of address: Predicative constructions: Properly speaking, Arabic has only three cases: nominative, accusative and genitive.
For instance, the Beijing dialect of Mandarin Chinese, to express strong feelings (especially negative ones) to someone, a neutral tone suffix -ei may be attached to certain address words.
It is most commonly applied to the word 孙子 (sūnzi, "grandson"), to form sūnzei, meaning approximately "Hey you nasty one!".
The vocative case in Korean is commonly used with first names in casual situations by using the vocative case marker (호격 조사) 아 (a) if the name ends in a consonant and 야 (ya) if the name ends with a vowel:[26] 미진이Mijini집에jibe가?ga?미진이 집에 가?Mijini jibe ga?Is Mijin going home?미진아,Mijina,집에jibe가?ga?미진아, 집에 가?Mijina, jibe ga?Mijin, are you going home?동배Dongbae뭐mwo해?hae?동배 뭐 해?Dongbae mwo hae?What is Dongbae doing?동배야,Dongbaeya,뭐mwo해?hae?동배야, 뭐 해?Dongbaeya, mwo hae?Dongbae, what are you doing?In formal Korean, the marker 여 (yeo) or 이여 (iyeo) is used, the latter if the root ends with a consonant.
