Certain nouns denoting a profession of social importance, like dokterdoctor or domineepastor, can be used as vocatives, i.e. in a function similar to that of the proper noun in (113a). In this function, exemplified in (113b), the noun phrase is determinerless.

Dutch has an extended use of the vocative where the speaker uses dokter/dominee as the subject of a yes/no-question, addressing the question to the person referred to by the noun. As shown in (114a), the profession nouns can then optionally be preceded by a definite determiner. Finally, constructions such as (114b) are typically used when addressing persons who would use the label dokter/dominee as a vocative for the person under discussion.

Other profession nouns, such as oberwaiter, can also be used as vocatives, as shown in (115a). However, they are not common in constructions like (115b&c). Example (115b) is unacceptable without the article, and even with the article it is stylistically marked in that it sounds patronizing to at least some speakers; example (115c) is excluded without the article, and with the article the noun phrase acts as a normal referring expression.

Vocatives such as mevrouwmadam and meneersir can be used in the same way. In example (116a), the vocatives are used as a common way of politely addressing an adult person. In (116b) and especially (116c), on the other hand, the social rank of the addressee becomes more prominent: mevrouw and meneer are then used to express a difference in social status, with the addressee being placed high(er) on the social scale. These examples, which do not allow the use of an article, seem a bit old-fashioned.

Kinship nouns such as grootmoedergrandmother in (117) can also be used in a similar way to the nouns in (114) and (116). Like mevrouw/meneer in (116), these kinship nouns are never preceded by a definite determiner. Note that in all these examples the more intimate noun oma, which is closer to a true vocative, would normally be used.

Kinship nouns seem to have a wider range of uses than the profession nouns in (114). In (114b), the speaker refers to a particular person by using the label that the listener would normally use when addressing that person, whereas comparable examples with bare kinship nouns are often ambiguous in several ways, depending on the context. Like (114b), example (118) has a reading in which vader/pappa is the label normally used by the listener (but not necessarily by the speaker himself) when addressing the person under discussion: this is the “your daddy” reading in (118i). There is also a reading in which the speaker uses the label vader/pappa to refer to himself, i.e. (118ii) can be uttered by the addressee’s father. Finally, the sentence can be uttered by the person who normally uses the label vader/pappa to address the person under discussion: this is the “my daddy” reading in (118iii). In all three interpretations of (118) are extended uses of bare vocatives.

Finally, consider the examples in (119). Since the bare noun phrases in (119) are “labels”, like dokter in (114b&c) or vader in (118), it does not seem unreasonable to integrate these examples under the general rubric of vocatives and vocative-like constructions. These bare noun phrases occur in PPs, nominal predicates and argument positions (e.g. subject).

The bare noun phrases in (119) alternate with the examples in (120) involving ordinal numerals. In these examples, the use of the definite determiner is obligatory, since noun phrases with ordinal numerals do not normally occur in the absence of a determiner.