Browsing results for Interjections
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wilkins, David P. (1992). Interjections as deictics. Journal of Pragmatics, 18(2/3), 119-158. DOI: 10.1016/0378-2166(92)90049-H
Reissued in an abridged format as:
Wilkins, David P. (1995). Expanding the traditional category of deictic elements: Interjections as deictics. In Judith F. Duchan, Gail A. Bruder, & Lynne E. Hewitt (Eds.), Deixis in narrative: A cognitive science perspective (pp. 359-386). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.
The paper examines some of the semantic and pragmatic consequences of a form being both a lexeme (i.e. a simple sign) and a conventional utterance. The approach presented here has far-reaching consequences for the manner in which interjections are identified, analyzed, and subclassified. In particular it it suggested that interjections have all the features attributed to utterances, including the facts that they convey complete propositions and have an illocutionary purpose. Given that interjections are context-bound, it is possible to observe that the referential arguments in the propositions conveyed by interjections are provided by context. As lexemes, interjections have ‘real’ semantic (i.e. propositional/conceptual) content, and within the decomposition of all interjections are basic deictic elements. These ‘primitive’ deictic elements are not tied referentially to any entities until they are placed in context. In this sense both a pragmatic and a semantic approach are required to account for interjections. Interjections are, therefore, shifters (indexicals) by virtue of being built semantically out of basic deictic elements and so should be considered a reasonable topic within the study of deixis.
Definitions, using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach to lexical decomposition, are proposed for a varied range of interjections from English, Mparntwe Arrernte (Central Australia), American Sign Language, and Italian.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) Cincin!, (E) me (interjection), (E) Ngke!, (E) Ow!, (E) To'!, (E) Wow!
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on August 27, 2018.
Ameka, Felix (1992). The meaning of phatic and conative interjections. Journal of Pragmatics, 18(2/3), 245-271. DOI: 10.1016/0378-2166(92)90054-F
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the meanings of the members of two subclasses of interjections in Ewe: the conative/volitive which are directed at an auditor, and the phatic which are used in the maintenance of social and communicative contact. It is demonstrated that interjections like other linguistic signs have meanings which can be rigorously stated. In addition, the paper explores the differences and similarities between the semantic structures of interjections on one hand and formulaic words on the other. This is done through a comparison of the semantics and pragmatics of an interjection and a formulaic word which are used for welcoming people in Ewe. It is contended that formulaic words are speech acts qua speech acts while interjections are not fully fledged speech acts because they lack an illocutionary dictum in their semantic structure.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) (k)ss...!, (E) (particles for chasing animals), (E) à, (E) atúù!, (E) búbúbúi!, (E) dzáà!, (E) he!, (E) ú:ru!, (E) u:wúi!
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1992). The semantics of interjection. Journal of Pragmatics, 18(2/3), 159-192. DOI: 10.1016/0378-2166(92)90050-L
Translated into Russian as:
Вежбицкая, А. [Wierzbicka, Anna] (1999). Семантика междометия. In Вежбицкая, А. [Wierzbicka, Anna], Семантические универсалии и описание языков, под ред. Татьяна В. Булыгиной [Semantic universals and the description of languages, ed. Tatyana V. Bulygina] (pp. 611-649). Москва [Moscow]: Языки русской культуры [Languages of Russian Culture].
An expanded version of this paper was published earlier as chapter 8 (pp. 285-339) of:
Wierzbicka, Anna (1991, 2003). Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
This paper argues that interjections – like any other linguistic elements – have their meaning, and that this meaning can be identified and captured in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage developed by the author and her colleagues. A number of interjections from English, Polish, Russian, and Yiddish are discussed, and rigorous semantic formulae are proposed which can explain both the similarities and the differences in their range of use. For example, the English interjection yuk! is compared and contrasted with its nearest Polish and Russian counterparts fu!, fe!, rfu!. The author shows that while the meaning of interjections cannot be adequately captured in terms of emotion words such as disgust, it can be captured in terms of more fine-grained components, closer to the level of universal semantic primitives. The role of sound symbolism in the functioning of interjections is discussed, and the possibility of reflecting this symbolism in the semantic formulae is explored.
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Ameka, Felix (1992). Interjections: The universal yet neglected part of speech. Journal of Pragmatics, 18(2/3), 101-118. DOI: 10.1016/0378-2166(92)90048-G
It is perhaps true that apart from nouns and verbs, interjections – those little words, or ‘non-words’, which can constitute utterances by themselves – are a word class found in all languages. But it is also true that this class of items has eluded description and has, for the most part, been ignored in theoretical linguistics discourse. In this introduction to a special issue of the Journal of Pragmatics dedicated to interjections and similar items, I want to attempt to draw out and suggest solutions to the confusion that has beset these important items.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) thank you, (E) Wow!
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Evans, Nicholas (1992). ‘Wanjh! Bonj! Nja!’: Sequential organization and social deixis in Mayali interjections. Journal of Pragmatics, 18(2/3), 225-244. DOI:10.1016/0378-2166(92)90053-E
This paper examines the semantics and pragmatics of a number of interjections in Mayali, a language of Arnhem Land, Australia. Definitions using Natural Semantic Metalanguage are used to make explicit the complex relations between the lexical meanings of interjections and their
interpretation in context. One class of interjections, which I call organizing interjections, play an important role in structuring discourse and in many cases constitute complete turns in conversational (and also in basically non-verbal) sequences. Their behaviour is explained by making explicit the presuppositions about discourse context, or ‘discourse placedness conditions’, that are part of their lexical meaning. Another two sets of interjections, the ‘Gesundheit set’ and the ‘sorry-for-the-swearing set’, exhibit highly specific presuppositions about social context, or ‘social placedness conditions’. Other interjections have a substantial degree of indirection, making inference necessary for their interpretation. To illustrate this, the interjection mah ‘time to do something!‘, whose agent is not semantically specified, is compared with others like nja ‘you take this now!’, whose agent is made explicit in the semantic representation. To cover cases like mah, it is useful to introduce a distinction between overt indirection, the lack of formally explicit coding of some aspect of meaning (e.g. argument or complement ellipsis), and covert indirection, the absence of some aspect of meaning from the semantic representation itself. All interjections, on this definition, are overtly indirect, but only some (such as mah) are in addition covertly indirect.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) balmarded, (E) bebba, (E) bonj, (E) mah, (E) med, (E) nadjalaminj, (E) ngoi, (E) nja
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wilkins, David P. (1995). Expanding the traditional category of deictic elements: Interjections as deictics. In Judith F. Duchan, Gail A. Bruder, & Lynne E. Hewitt (Eds.), Deixis in narrative: A cognitive science perspective (pp. 359-386). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.
The bulk of this chapter is an abridged and re-edited version of an earlier paper (Wilkins, 1992). The primary purpose of that paper and, hence, this chapter is to argue that the traditional American linguistic view of deictic elements must be expanded to embrace interjections alongside the more standard members such as pronouns and demonstratives. To rescue interjections from the periphery of linguistic concerns requires a demonstration of two points: (a) that interjections share specific linguistic and communicative properties with more standard deictic elements, and (b) that it is possible to render a convincing account of the semantic structure and pragmatic usage of interjections. I attempt to expand this argument, and extend the demonstration of the two forementioned points by tying interjections in with the narrative and deictic center concerns that form the focus of the book in which the new version appears, but that were not explicitly covered in the original paper.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) Cincin!, (E) me (interjection), (E) Ngke!, (E) Ow!, (E) To'!, (E) Wow!
Published on November 22, 2017. Last updated on May 1, 2019.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1996). Między modlitwą a przekleństwem: O Jezu! i podobne wyrażenia na tle porównawczym [Between praying and swearing: A comparative study of Jesus! and other expressions]. Etnolingwistyka, 8, pp. 25-39.
Abstract:
Interjections such as Polish Mój Boże (‘Oh, my God!’), O Jezu (‘Jesus!’) or Matko Boska! (lit. ‘Oh, Virgin Mary!’) are usually neglected in descriptions of language for being “marginal” or “semantically empty” (or both at once). In this paper, these expressions are treated with due attention and a rich analysable semantics is attributed to them. A detailed comparison of Polish Mój Boże! and German Mein Gott illustrates the differences in the range of emotions present in each of the two expressions. It also indicates the need to conduct detailed comparative research on apparently equivalent interjections in various languages.
More information:
Written in Polish.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) Boże!, (E) Chryste Panie!, (E) Jezus Maria!, (E) Matko Boska!, (E) Mein Gott!, (E) Mój Boże!, (E) O Boże!, (E) O Jezu!
Published on August 9, 2018. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wesoła, Justyna (2010). Hiszpańskie wykrzykniki w polskiej praktyce przekładowej [Spanish exclamations in Polish translation practice]. Łask: Oficyna Wydawnicz LEKSEM.
The nature of exclamations is still not fully explained, which means that their definition remains an issue for debate. The increased interest in these units observed in recent years has resulted in relatively numerous studies on exclamations and has contributed to a significant development of knowledge about their phonetic, morphological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties. However, there are very few works devoted either to the functioning of exclamations in text, or to problems associated with their translation.
This dissertation is the first attempt to analyse Spanish exclamations in the context of Polish translation practice. Its aim is twofold:
1. to characterize Spanish interjections in terms of: a) their frequency of occurrence (in diachronic perspective), b) their possible meanings (explicated in NSM), c) their mode of functioning in three different literary genres (drama, epic and lyric); and
2. to determine what methods are used in the translation of exclamations, and why, and to assign appropriate Polish translation equivalents to individual instances of exclamation.
In addition, an attempt is made to observe the individual preferences of authors and translators and to formulate some general conclusions about exclamations as a category.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
이정애 [Lee, Jeong-Ae] (2011). *NSM에 기초한 국어 간투사의 의미 기술 [The semantic description of interjections in a Korean-based NSM] [In Korean]. 한국어 의미학 [Korean Studies in Meaning], 36.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 7, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2014). On “disgust”. In Fabienne Baider, & Georgeta Cislaru (Eds.), Linguistic approaches to emotions in context (pp. 73-97). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
DOI: 10.1075/pbns.241.06god
Abstract:
This study relies on the NSM approach to explore conceptualisations of “disgust” in English via semantic analysis of descriptive adjectives (disgusted and disgusting) and interjections (Ugh! and Yuck!). As well as drawing out some subtle meaning differences between these expressions, the exercise establishes that there is no one-to-one mapping between the meanings of descriptive emotion lexemes, on the one hand, and expressive interjections, on the other.
More broadly, the study seeks to advance the semantic study of “disgust-like” concepts in a cross-linguistic perspective, first, by highlighting aspects of meaning that differ between the English expressions and their near-equivalents in other languages, such as German, French and Polish, and second, by proposing a set of touchstone semantic components that can help facilitate cross-linguistic investigation.
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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) disgusted, (E) disgusting, (E) Fu!, (E) pleased, (E) sad, (E) Ugh!, (E) Yuck!
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2014). Jesus! vs. Christ! in Australian English: Semantics, secondary interjections and corpus analysis. In Jesús Romero-Trillo (Ed.), Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics 2014: New empirical and theoretical paradigms (pp. 55-77). Cham: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-06007-1_4
Using corpus-assisted semantic analysis, conducted in the NSM framework, this chapter explores the meanings and uses of two closely related secondary interjections, namely, Jesus! and Christ!, in Australian English. The interjections Shit! and Fuck! are touched on briefly. From a methodological point of view, the chapter can be read as a study in how corpus techniques and semantic analysis can work in tandem; in particular, how interaction with a corpus can be used to develop, refine and test fine-grained semantic hypotheses. From a content point of view, this study seeks to demonstrate two key propositions: first, that it is possible to identify semantic invariants, i.e. stable meanings, even for highly context-bound items such as interjections; second, that it is possible to capture and model speakers’ awareness of the degree and nature of the “offensiveness” of secondary interjections, in a Metalexical Awareness component that attaches, so to speak, to particular words. Both these propositions challenge conventional assumptions about the nature and interfacing between semantics and pragmatics. A final question raised in the study is how linguists can come to terms with the fact that people use interjections not only orally but also mentally, in “inner speech”.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) Christ!, (E) Fuck!, (E) Jesus!, (E) Shit!, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 7, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2014). Interjections and emotion (with special reference to “surprise” and “disgust”). Emotion Review, 6(1), 53-63.
DOI: 10.1177/1754073913491843
Abstract:
All languages have ‘emotive interjections’ (i.e. interjections expressing cognitively based feelings), and yet emotion researchers have invested only a tiny research effort into interjections, as compared with the huge body of research into facial expressions and words for emotion categories. This article provides an overview of the functions, meanings and cross-linguistic variability of interjections, concentrating on non-word-based ones such as Wow!, Yuck!, and Ugh! The aims are to introduce an area that will be unfamiliar to most readers, to illustrate how the NSM approach deals with interjectional meaning, and to start a discussion about an interdisciplinary research agenda for the study of emotive interjections. Examples are drawn from English, Polish, and Cantonese.
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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) ai1 jaa3! 呢樽, (E) Fu!, (E) Gee!, (E) Gosh!, (E) Tfu!, (E) Ugh!, (E) waa3! 哇, (E) Yikes!, (E) Yuck!
Published on April 27, 2019. Last updated on July 28, 2020.
Thompson, Rachel (2019). Tweaa! – A Ghanaian interjection of “contempt” in online political comments. Ampersand, 6.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amper.2019.100047 / Open access
Abstract:
This study examines the use of tweaa [tɕʏɪaa], an Akan emotive interjection that expresses contempt for a person, in the Corpus of GhanaWeb Comments in Ghana’s 2016 Election (CGCGE16). CGCGE16 comprises reader comments posted in the build-up to Ghana’s presidential elections in December 2016 on www.ghanaweb.com, a news website that guarantees freedom of speech and ensures citizen participation in online sociopolitical discussions. The study employs NSM to unpack the meaning of tweaa and give a fuller understanding of its rhetorical power in online political discourse. It points out that tweaa is derogatory and expresses lack of respect for the user’s target, thus, according to traditional Ghanaian values, its use is unacceptable, especially during asymmetrical interactions. Citizens, however, hide behind the shield of anonymity guaranteed by online platforms, and their ability to circumvent traditional gatekeepers of acceptable speech forms during online discourse, and freely use tweaa to vent their feelings against authority figures.
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Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) tweaa!, (E) Wow!
Published on August 18, 2023. Last updated on August 18, 2023.
Levisen, Carsten. (2019). Laughter interjections: Contributions to a lexical anthropology of humour (with special reference to Danish). Scandinavian Studies in Language, 10(1), 110-130.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7146/sss.v10i1.114674
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is threefold. Firstly, it seeks to fill a gap in the literature on interjections by suggesting that ‘laughter interjections’ (words such English haha or hehe) make up an important type of interjections that has so far not been accounted for in cross-linguistic work on interjections. Secondly, it argues that laughter interjections are thick with cultural meaning, and that they can play an important role for an “emic turn” in humour studies. Third, it develops a case study on “Danish funniness” with a point of departure in the Danish paradigm of laughter interjections. The paper explores humourous discourse from the perspective of these culturally specific expressive words, and provides high definition analysis of two Danish laughter interjections tøhø and hæhæ, using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage technique of explication. The general framework of the study is Lexical Anthropology, an approach to meaning analysis that combines insights from lexical semantics and linguistic anthropology.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) hæhæ, (E) tøhø, (T) Danish, (T) English
Published on August 14, 2021. Last updated on August 14, 2021.
Wong, Jock O. (2020). The Singlish interjection bojio in Bromhead, Helen and Zhengdao Ye (eds.) Meaning, Life and Culture . pp. 99-114. Canberra: ANU Press
DOI: http://doi.org/10.22459/MLC.2020.05 (Open Access)
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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) bojio, (E) jio, (E) kiasu, (S) saying bojio
