Is a vocative used as a subject in a sentence? If not, what is it used for? (By the way, what is the linguistic term that corresponds to the classification of the components in a sentence into subject, object, ...?)
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Is "grammatical relation" the term you're looking for?– gotube ♦Commented Jul 19, 2023 at 2:33
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1 Answer
Technically, no - because what follows the vocative is usually either an imperative, which has no subject, or addresses the audience using a pronoun, which then becomes the subject.
Example 1:
David! Come here!
The vocative attracts the attention of the audience, and then the imperative addresses them directly without the use of a subject.
Example 2:
David! You must come here!
The statement uses the pronoun 'you' as the subject.
From a more practical point of view - the whole point of the evocative is to indicate the 'missing' subject so that the right person or group will understand the command or request.
answered Jul 18, 2023 at 8:03
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1It's called the vocative because it is a function in its own right. It is used to avoid any confusion when using the imperative, or when addressing a person directly because we don't use a person's name in the third person when speaking directly to them. For example, if I said "Tim should look up 'vocative' in the dictionary", you would think I was talking to somebody else about you. So what I'd say is "Tim! You should look up 'vocative' in the dictionary". Commented Jul 18, 2023 at 8:25