Expressive vocatives
This chapter develops a syntactic and semantic analysis of German expressive vocatives (eVocs), which consists of a second person pronoun and an expressive nominal part. It documents the special properties of eVocs and identifies three structural subtypes (autonomous, parenthetical, integrated). It is shown that none of the previous semantic analysis of vocatives can deal with eVocs. This chapter develops a new semantic approach according to which integrated eVocs are the most basic ones, consisting of a pronoun and expressive modification. Parenthetical and autonomous eVocs are then extensions of the integrated version, just adding an activational vocative function and an exclamational component respectively. Furthermore, it is argued that syntactically, eVocs consist of a D-element—the pronoun—which has to select for an expressive complement. The upshot of this chapter for the hypothesis of expressive syntax is that expressivity as a syntactic feature can be selected for by other expressions.