Re: cases

Raymond Brown wrote:
> PS - I also knew that some Romanian proper nouns do have separate vocative
> singulars.
Actually, it's animates, especially human.  But it can also be used for
common nouns, like omule (man), cumàtrule or cumetre (Grandfather - I
used grave for breve) - it usually occurs in the definite form.
According to the Rumanian article in The World's Major Languages (which,
BTW, I got for my last birthday):

The vocative is under very heavy pressure and is likely to disappear.
Its occurrence in the modern language, as limited as it is, is felt to
be a Slavonic legacy - in particular, feminines in -o (Ano [from Ana];
vulpe "vixen" --> vulpeo "o vixen" - though this later is admittedly
rare).  This directly reflects a Slavonic termination and cannot readily
be accounted for by normal evolution from the Latin vocatives.

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