diagramming vocatives
Daniel Riaño
danielrr at mad.servicom.es
Fri Apr 30 01:40:19 EDT 1999
The syntagm in vocative is always a sentence, with impresive-expresive
function, not subordinated or co-ordinated to the sentence it is embedded
in (or placed in front of, in Homer, etc).
Therefor, I follow the following schema: I connect the vocative syntagm to
the whole sentence: the whole sentence tree is on the left, the branch that
points to the vocative, on the right. In the top of the tree I put not just
the "O"(ration) (or S(entence))" tag, but a special label I call
"O"(ration) (or S(entence)) in context".
As an abstract example:
Or. in Cont.
-------------------------
| |
| |
| |
O (syntagm in vocative)
---------------
| |
| |
SV Sub.
---------- ----------
| | | |
... ... ... ...
I am writing now for a paper the theoretical foundations for that, but you
must be thinking by now what an ugly thing to read it should be if written
by me in English!
Nota Bene: I do not diagram: I parse the text in a special editor and tell
the program to do the diagramming for me: It is much faster!
>>Message text written by Jonathan Ryder:
>
>>I'm currently teaching myself simplified diagramming/sentence flow as a
>>technique for working out how sentences, clauses fit together. Can
>>anybody who 'diagrams' tell me how they treat vocatives or address,
>>usually with 2nd person verb? Do you use put it in the subject 'slot'?
>
>Jonathan,
>
>I just position the vocative in the subject slot. However, I put the
>vocative
>in parentheses. It works well for me.
>
>Jon R. Venema
>Western Seminary
------------------------------------------------
Daniel Riaño Rufilanchas
Madrid, España
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