vocative case

Also known as casus vocativus, vocative, VOC

grammatical case used for a noun that identifies a person (animal, object etc.) being addressed or occasionally the determiners of that noun

AI overview

The vocative case is a grammatical feature used in some languages to mark nouns when you're directly addressing a person, animal, or object—like saying "Hey, Maria!" or "Listen, friend." It matters because it helps speakers and writers clearly signal who or what they're talking to, and understanding it is essential for learning languages that use this grammatical system.

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exact match: www.lexinfo.net/ontology/3.0/lexinfo#vocativeCase
Commons category: Vocative case
short name: VOC
entry in abbreviations table: Voc.
equivalent class: purl.org/linguistics/gold/VocativeCase

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In grammar, the vocative case (abbreviated voc) is a grammatical case which is used for a noun that identifies a person (animal, object, etc.) being addressed or occasionally for the noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and numerals) of that noun. A noun of address is an expression of direct address by which the identity of the party spoken to is set forth expressly within a sentence. For example, in the sentence "I don't know, John," John is a noun of address that indicates the party being addressed, as opposed to the sentence "I don't know John", in which "John" is the direct object of the verb "know".

As observed by Zwicky, vocative case is used to express at least two functions: (i) as a call aimed to attract the attention of an unratified overhearer, as (ii) address to maintain and perform the social relation towards the hearer.