I expect one or two of you, mothers, would disagree.

[Nonverbis]

This is from Wordbuilder by Guy Wellman.






I suppose, mothers should be embraced by commas:

I expect one or two of you, mothers, would disagree.

This is the vocative comma case.

Am I right?

 

[5jj]

I would certainly not use commas there.

 

[emsr2d2]

No commas are necessary. It's a way of saying "One or two of all you mothers out there". He's addressing all mothers and then saying that one or two of them would probably disagree.

 

[jutfrank]

It would be wrong to use commas there.

 

[probus]

Although I've never previously heard of the "vocative comma case", if I were speaking those words aloud I'd probably pause slightly at those two locations. So in a direct quotation the commas wouldn't be wrong. Nevertheless I'm in favour of omitting commas whenever possible, and these are unnecessary.

 

[jutfrank]

It would be wrong to make pauses (or write commas) there because you mothers is a grammatical unit so you can't break those words up. As emsr2d2 says, you mothers means something like 'all you people out there who are mothers'.

 

[Ostap]

This is not the vocative comma case, it's the objective case. "Mothers" is an "extension" of the object pronoun "you".