Name-calling: The Russian ‘new Vocative’ and its status

Abstract

Henning Andersen (2012) points out that the Russian “new Vocative” (e.g., мам! ‘mama!’, Саш! ‘Sasha!’) presents a series of unusual behaviors that set it apart from ordinary case marking. Andersen argues that the Vocative should not be considered a declensional word form of nouns. The Russian Vocative is certainly an uncommon linguistic category, but does this entail setting up a new transcategorial derivation? Similar restrictions are found in other markers that are generally recognized as case desinences. The pragmatic use of virile vs. deprecatory nominative plural markers in Polish and lexical and morphophonological restrictions on the “second Locative” in Russian. The restrictions found in the Vocative are certainly unusual, but no single one of them can be said to exclude a marker from being identified with a case, and one must ask what we gain by inaugurating new derivational types.