Vocatives: Correlating the syntax and discourse at the interface

Abstract

Vocative expressions have been neglected in linguistic inquiry until very recently. This article provides a novel approach to the study of vocatives based on correlating the syntax and discourse at the interface. Syntactically, we provide empirical evidence that vocatives are visible to syntactic computation, belong to the C-domain, and discoursally perform a performative “at-issue” content/meaning exactly like aboutness topics (A-topics), based on a common selective property of both constituents. They select from a set of available things/people an entity the sentence is about, and are linked to the T-domain via coreferentiality between the vocativized A-topic and the thematic subject of imperatives, i.e., pro, thus correlating both components of the grammar at the interface.