Analysing the Structure of Proper Names Used as Vocatives in English under the Systemic Functional Linguistics Model
Abstract
This paper analyses the structures of English proper names which are used as vocatives under the SFL (systemic functional linguistics) model. The procedure of analysis is as follows: first, viewing previous literature offers a chance to refer to plenty of examples of vocatives while providing a theoretical basis for this research. Second, most examples used in this paper are proposed by an English native speaker and the author together. This native speaker is qualified to cover the most common uses of vocatives considering his experience of saying vocatives to others and hearing them from others. Third, the method of attesting to some relatively uncommon usage is that the author comes up with a potential structure first and then searches for real-world examples that can support that assumption in trustworthy sources such as specific corpora and public speech. Therefore, although this may be a preliminary analysis, leaving issues that require further discussion, hopefully, this work will prove a step forward in this under-researched area.
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