<Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> Look up vocative in Wiktionary, the free dictionary . </Td> </Tr> </Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> Look up vocative in Wiktionary, the free dictionary . </Td> </Tr> <P> The vocative case (abbreviated VOC) is the case used for a noun that identifies a person (animal, object etc .) being addressed or occasionally the determiners of that noun . A vocative expression is an expression of direct address by which the identity of the party spoken to is set forth expressly within a sentence . For example, in the sentence "I don't know, John," John is a vocative expression that indicates the party being addressed, as opposed to the sentence "I don't know John" in which "John" is the direct object of the verb "know ." </P> <P> Historically, the vocative case was an element of the Indo - European case system and existed in Latin, Sanskrit and Classical Greek . Many modern Indo - European languages (English, Spanish, etc .) have lost the vocative case, but others retain it, including the Baltic languages, some Celtic languages and most Slavic languages (not the case for Russian). </P>

When is the vocative case used in latin
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