Vocative case

The vocative case (abbreviated VOC) is the case used for a noun that identifies a person (animal, object, etc.) being addressed or, occasionally, the determiners of that noun. A vocative expression is an expression of direct address where 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 vocative expression that indicates the party being addressed—as opposed to the sentence, "I don't know John", where John is the direct object of the verb "know."

Historically, the vocative case was an element of the Indo-European system of cases, and existed in Latin, Sanskrit, and Classical Greek. Many modern Indo-European languages have lost the vocative case. Many, however, retain it, including the Baltic languages, some Celtic languages, and most Slavic languages.

Some linguists argue that the vocative form is not a case but a special form of nouns not belonging to any case, since vocative expressions are not related syntactically to other words in sentences.

Distinct vocative forms are assumed to have existed in all early Indo-European languages, and they have survived in some. Take, for example, the Indo-European word for "wolf" in various languages:

(lúk-o-s)

(lúk-e)

(vlĭk-ŭ)

(vlĭč-e)

Notes on notation: The elements separated with hyphens denote the stem, the so-called thematic vowel of the case and the actual suffix. In Latin, e.g., the nominative case is lupus and the vocative case is lupe, whereas the accusative case is lupum. The asterisk before the Proto-Indo-European words means that they are theoretical reconstructions, not attested in a written source. The symbol ◌̩ (vertical line below) indicates a consonant serving as a vowel (it should appear directly below the "l" or "r" in these examples, but may appear after them on some systems due to font display issues). All final consonants have been lost in Proto-Slavic so both the nominative and vocative Old Church Slavonic forms do not have true endings, only reflexes of the old thematic vowels.

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