Vocative case Re: [tied] Vocative Capitalization.

This brings to my memory an article I read several years ago about "new
vocative" in modern Russian. It pointed out that in spoken Russian -a nouns
frequently lose their final -a when vocative form is expected. This
phenomenon occurs only in vocative. I am wondering if it is a sufficient
basis to talk about a new vocative case?
Btw, what are the criteria for deciding whether a langauge has or has not a
certain case?

At 7/22/01 08:34 AM +0000, you wrote:

>On another net forum, it occurred to me that, for those languages with
>a vocative case, those nouns which would be in the vocative case would
>be, in translation, considered to be English proper nouns -- i.e.,
>capitalized nouns.
>
>It does explain the really hard cases. "Why, Mother, are you ...",
>"why, Mr. Congressman, have you told lies about Chandra".
>
>I usually explain the difficult capitalization cases as 'titles'
>standing in for real names.
>
>This suggests English might actually have a remnant of a vocative
>case. I don't think so, but it is an interesting topic to talk about.
>
>
>
>
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