Re: Opinions wanted: person of vocative

Strictly speaking, Rihana-ye does not have a vocative as such, but it does
have status prefixes--ti-before higher status and ni- before lower status,
which I have considered using in translations where the original has a
vocative. E.g. in the rabbit poem "oh rabbit" I considered translating
as "titejoba" where tejoba is rabbit and "ti" is the higher-status prefix,
--since Rihana-ye is supposed (in some respects) to be like Japanese, one
might translate it as "Honorable Rabbit." I have not translated the Lord's
Prayer into Rihana-ye (as unlike Natece it has no conculture links to
Christianity) , but the same construction could be used there
" Sebaka-fe-ye Tidakoba"...our Honorable Father...though as the Rihana-ye
culture has a patriarchal deity I would probably use his name Tivaba(which
literally means God-Man, as distinct from the other two major deities
God-Woman and God-Child). As for the following phrase "which art/who is in
heaven, I would probably make that the equivalent of a participle phrase
preceeding the expression "father", as is done in the Korean prayer, which
literally begins "Heaven-dwelling father..." so the Rihana-ye would be
Ta-me fo-mi (heaven-in living)Tivaba .....
I did translate the Lord's Prayer into Natece years ago. There is no
vocative or similar distinction there, and the language (especially by the
time of the heavy Anglo-Christian influence which produced the prayer)
was heavily influenced by English forms, so it began IIRC "Nahata acecen
cenatec natecenna en Nhatlectecna" literally Father our who live in
Heaven" One could say the use of cenatec (who) indicates a third-person
construction, but it is not very well defined given the limitations of the
language.
John Leland

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