How do both traditional grammar and linguistics categorize addressees within sentences?

Question

By traditional grammar I am referring to the grammar used in books about teaching languages, this grammar uses terminology, that is not perceived as standard in linguistics. For example terms like part-of-sentence.

By linguistics, I am referring in this context to how the parts of a sentence (do not confuse this with parts-of-sentence) are analyzed following concepts from the terminology of linguistics like syntax trees and grammar theories.

By addressee, I am referring to the person addressed within the sentence, for instance:

• My Love, you have not washed the dishes yet.
• Jerome, come on and help me get rid of that white clown.
• Hey, Mister, wanna kiss my sister? one dollar.
• Teresa, should I prepare pancake or fish?

Answer 1

The direct address is not a part of the sentence and, as far as I know, it is not included into syntactic trees. Some languages like Sanskrit, Latin, Ukrainian, Georgian, etc. have a special Vocative case to mark the direct addresses, but since cases are needed to mark the syntactic function of NPs within a sentence, and the vocative expressions have no function like that, some linguists argue that it is not a case, it is just a special vocative form of the noun.

The direct address has two main functions, to identify the party addressed (and to express one's attitude towards it, cf. 'Sir' vs. 'you bastard' as direct addresses) and to attract the attention of the addressee to what one says, in the latter case the direct address functions very much like interjections, e.g. 'hey!'