Some considerations about intonation patterns of vocatives in Romanian language

Abstract

This paper focuses on an analysis of the intonation patterns of different types of vocatives in Romanian language. We present the main characteristics of the tonal patterns observed in the vocative constructions instances of isolated vocatives and contexts in which vocatives occur in different positions: initial, middle, and final. Our analysis, in the framework of AM phonology with ToBI conventions, reveals that most of isolated vocatives are realized as L+H*(!)H% (vocative chant), and L+H* L% (insistent call). For non-isolated vocatives the most frequent contours are labeled as L+H* L% and H+L* L%. Cross-linguistically, our findings show that Romanian vocatives display the same pattern as other Romance languages.