Re: [tied] Norwegian Vocative

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 6071
Date: 2001-02-12

Neither PIE nor PGmc adjectives had vocative forms. The retention of weak adjectives in direct address may be due to eurhythmy. Alternating stress patterns are often preferred in fixed phrases and idiomatic expressions.
 
Piotr
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: g-tegle@...
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, February 12, 2001 7:34 PM
Subject: [tied] Norwegian Vocative

Used as a subject/d. object/i. object the phrase "a bad boy" would be
translated into Norwegian as "en slem gutt". For direct address the
the same phrase would go like "slemme gutt".

Other examples:

E: "a good god" - N: "en god gud"
E: "good god!" - N: "gode gud!"


E: "a little girl" - N: "ei liten jente"
E: "little girl!" - N: "lille jente!" (adj. liten is irreg.)

I believe i know the origin of the -e ending. Originally the forms
came in use because of a preceeding possessive pronoun. Any following
adjectives would consequently be weak. Nowadays the pronoun has
dissapeared; however the adjective remains weak. The ending of the
adjective is therefore -e (not -Ø as should be expected, since the
noun appears to be indefinite. Ø = no ending).

My question then is: May the -e ending of adjective be considered to
be a vocative case marker?

I don't know if the same pattern is present in Swedish or Danish,
though I believe so.