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Montes, 1999). Furthermore, there is a dichotomy in the points
of view of scholars
concerning ‘periphery’ discussion of interjections. Ameka (1992), Wierzbicka
(1992) and Wilkins (1992) consider interjections as part of language whereas
Goffman (1981) states that interjections are not part of language at all.
To start with, the term
interjection, which originates from Latin term,
inter
iecto (=I throw in the middle), suggests the discursive nature of interjections by
being inserted in the middle of an utterance or discourse.
In the literature, the definitions of interjection indicate the heterogeneity of
the classification of items as follows:
interjection (n.) A term used in the traditional classification of
parts of speech, referring to a class of words which are
unproductive, do not enter into syntactic relationships with other
classes, and whose function is purely emotive, e.g.
Yuk!, Strewth!,
Blast!, Tut tut! There is an unclear boundary between these items
and other types of exclamation, where there may be more than one
word, e.g.
Excellent!, Lucky devil!, Cheers!, Well well! Several
alternative ways of analyzing these items have been suggested,
using such notions as minor sentence, formulaic language, etc.
(Crystal 2003: 239).
Interjection Traditionally [used] of forms that express ‘state of
mind’ and do not enter into specific syntactic relations with other
words: e.g.
Wow, Yuk, Phew. Some […] are also idiophones, with
phonetic features peculiar to them.
A part of speech in ancient Roman accounts of Latin. Extended by
some recent writers to a larger and more indeterminate category of
which the traditional interjections are only part (Matthews 2007:
198).
Interjection: A conventional lexical form which (commonly and)
conventionally constitutes an utterance on its own, (typically) does
not enter into construction with other word classes, is usually
monomorphemic, and (generally) does not host inflectional or
derivational morphemes (Wilkins 1992:124).
The diversity of definitions of interjections given above stems from the
lack of homogeneity of classifications of interjections. As Libert (2012) states,
“interjections are such a varied set of items that one cannot say anything about the
32
set as a whole” (p. 285). Interjection, as a label, has been classified as
a word class
and “an utterance type” due to its nature (Ameka, 1992: 102). However, on the
one hand, in spite of the different degrees of proximity of interjections with
particles and formulae, scholars classified it under these linguistic items (cf.
James, 1973; Evans, 1992; Kryk, 1992; Wilkins, 1992 and Cuenca, 2002). On the
other hand, they have also been classified under discourse markers (cf. Schourup,
1985; Schiffrin, 1987
and Montes, 1999).
As pointed out previously, interjections have been a neglected subject
matter in linguistic studies. However, considerable number of linguistic analyses
of interjections has been published since the publication of special volume of
interjections in
Journal of Pragmatics in 1992
. In the volume, a great many
scholars studied interjections from various linguistic perspectives: pragmatic,
semantic and a combination of both perspectives. Therefore, for a proper
understanding of the interjection literature it is necessary to present the studies by
categorizing them according to their related subfield of linguistics which is either
pragmatics or semantics. In the following part, the growing body of literature on
the combined semantic and pragmatic analyses of interjections is presented.
To begin with, pragmatic analyses of interjections in various languages in
the world constitute a large part of the related literature compared to the semantic
analyses. Ameka (1992), in his pioneer article
Interjections: The universal yet
neglected part of speech, studied the nature of interjections
with respect to the part
of speech along with the ideas of the Greek and Latin grammarians by defining
interjections “non-words”, “syntactically-independent” and signifier of a feeling
or state of mind. Firstly, he repeated the conventional categorization of
interjections: primary and secondary interjections. He distinguished primary
interjections by defining them as “little words or non-words” which cannot be
used otherwise. As the name of his article suggests, he discussed the peripherality
of interjections in linguistic analyses. In the last section he proposed a new
classification of interjections on the basis of the communicative functions they
perform. He classified them into three categories which are expressive (with focus