Re: [tied] Vocative case in Romance

From: Miguel Carrasquer
Message: 16668
Date: 2002-11-10

On Sun, 10 Nov 2002 12:05:17 +0100, alexmoeller@... wrote:

>[Moeller]
>1) for the 2-end latin declination:N.deus, V. deus is an
>exception , right?

In the first place, I apologise for writing "declination" instead of
"declension".

Deus is an exception, in a way, although it is always possible to use
the Nom. instead of the Voc. in solemn invocations. What's special
about <deus> is that in invocations it is always used solemnly, so the
Voc. is simply not attested. More typical exceptions are the nouns in
-er (puer pueri:; ager, agri:) which drop both -us and -e in the Nom.
and Voc., and the nouns in -ius, with Voc. in -i: (for *-ie). So too
meus "my", Voc. mi: [and presumably the unattested Voc. of <deus>,
which we would expect to have been *<dei:>]. I can't check in
Perseus, because it's down for maintenance, but I would expect <deus
meus> "my God!" to be more correct Latin than <deus mi:>.

>3) you said -e and -o for masc and feminine are from slavic
>and this is "obvious".

I said -o was obvious. The masculine ending -e can be interpreted as
native Latin, if one insists, but weighing all the evidence, it seems
more likely that it was likewise borrowed from Slavic.

>For me is not clear why the vocative in "o" is a slavic
>influence. Why?Because in slavic is vocatiev too?Is the "o" in
>slavic the only vocative ending?

For non-soft a:-stems, yes (except in Slavic lgs. which have lost the
Vocative, where Nom. -a is used).

The full array of Vocative endings is:

i-stems: Voc -i
u-stems: Voc -u
C-stems/u:-stems: (Voc. = Nom.)
a:-stems: Voc -o
ja:-stems: Voc -(j)e
o-stems: Voc -e
jo-stems: Voc. -(j)u

>Are slavic languages the only languages with vocative in "o"?

Probably not, but the only relevant ones.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...