felipesnark wrote:I wouldn't expect it to be used very often with inanimates, but I could see there being a historical explanation due to some con-religions. By saying 'animate' nouns and 'inanimate' nouns, I'm simplifying a bit. Shonkasika has six genders, three of which are "animate" and three of which are "inanimate". The three animate genders generally have sentient beings, most animals (generally those perceived to move), and some natural phenomena. The three inanimate genders generally include everything else, including things that alive, but sessile.
If something can't hear or otherwise sense what the speaker says, and/or cannot respond or otherwise react to the utterance, there's no practical point in addressing it.
If it can't come when called, nor even perk up its ears and pay attention, there's no practical point in calling it.
People do address inanimate things, and even abstractions, as poetic or rhetorical devices. (Like DesEsseintes' example. Or Ogden Nash's "O Duty!")
But I don't see why a gender of things that can't see or can't hear or can't move -- at least can't move fast enough for a human to see it in a few seconds or less -- needs a vocative case different from some other case.
In fact I think a case could be made that they might easily be "accusative-only", the way some nouns (e.g. scissors and pants) are "plural-only" and some verbs are "middle-voice-only".
Inanimate things are unlikely to be agents. They're also unlikely to be recipients.
There might be a good reason for them to have a genitive, though.
Maybe their unmarked tense applies when they are intransitive subjects and also when they are transitive patients/objects.
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I'm not trying to talk you out of it. I'm only saying you'll probably want to (eventually) explain it in your grammar of your conlang.
Every case, as far as I know, has more than one use, that is, more than one meaning.
"Vocative" might mean other things besides "the thing this noun refers to is being addressed or called".
If the noun refers to something which can't obey commands, can't answer questions, can't come or go, and so on; maybe the other meaning(s) of "vocative" matter more when that noun is inflected into the "vocative" case.
If so; IMO you'll want to explain. (Someday.)