{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02420135527589545, 'fraction_numerical': 0.000968054211035818, 'mean_word_length': 5.228915662650603, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
8 Taking Stock

The manipulation of definite articles, augments, type of Vocative Particles, or similar grammaticalization strategies in a number of unrelated languages indicated a systematic pattern by which the vocative noun is embedded under a functional field (i.e., the vocative phrase VocP) to which features concerning the addressee semantics are mapped. VocP relates to the clause through the intermediary of functional heads that map the illocutionary force intrinsic to direct addresses. This is the concluding chapter of the book, which focuses on the syntax of direct addresses, and treats the vocatives as a subset of this type of speech acts. It provides the information on how direct addresses are singled out from the wider umbrella of speech acts (e.g., by establishing the distinction between addresses and exclamations). The syntactic approach to vocatives took as the starting point the cartographic representation of speech acts in Speas & Tenny. Keywords: direct addresses; speech acts; syntactic approach; VocP