Overt speakers in syntax

Abstract

This paper focuses on a type of direct address in Sason Arabic that fails to behave like a regular vocative phrase. In particular, unlike regular vocative phrases, this form of address spells out both the speaker and the addressee, and it is conditioned by the speaker’s expression of affection towards the addressee. A DP and its adjacent invariable clitic (i.e., a frozen 3rd person singular form of a possessive pronoun) are the constituents of this form of direct address, and either of them can equally spell out the speaker or the addressee; hence, the label mutable direct address (MDA) for this construction. Coordination, constituency, pluralization and substitution tests indicate that the derivation of MDAs does not involve the left periphery of DPs (as vocative phrases do) but the left periphery of clauses. In this respect, we adopt the cartographic representation of speech act phrases (SAP) (e.g., as in Haegeman & Hill 2013) and argue that MDAs instantiate a possible variation within SAP structures. That is, while a regular SAP field is split (over speaker and hearer heads), the SAP underlying MDAs remerges the two heads, so the speech act functional features are bundled and associated with a single SA head. Thus, MDAs provide new evidence for the extent of derivational variations that may arise on the basis of the feature inventory currently accepted for SAP domains.