UPOTREBA VOKATIVA U REČENIČNOJ STRUKTURI
USE OF THE VOCATIVE FORM IN SENTENCE STRUCTURE

Summary/Abstract: It is widely accepted in grammatical literature that the vocative case cannot fill any position in the sentence structure and that it is only used for addressing others. However, there are some examples in which the vocative form could be considered part of a sentence structure. This paper presents and analyses such instances in the use of the vocative form. Examples in which the vocative case is used as a subject or a predicative in oral poetry have already been registered. This paper also provides similar examples from written literature, with comments and explanations regarding assertions that the vocative can function as the “subject of the second person” and also relating to the status of the vocative case in direct speech constructions. The most interesting constructions are those with verbs zvati, vikati and obraćati se, in which the vocative can be exchanged with the nominative or the instrumental case, so it is possible to state that conditionally, the vocative can be a verb complement. In such constructions, the vocative form in the surface structure is the rest of the deep structure construction, which has the vocative as a dependent and some other substantive as the head. That head is omitted in the surface structure.

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