Talk:Interjection

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Alena b, CA108017, Natnicmo. Peer reviewers: Mrobbins4, Ericaldagar.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 00:37, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Major Changes
Added new sections to the article but still to re-link references. Many references are already listed in the references section.CA108017 (talk) 21:42, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes and No
Are yes and no interjections?

Weasel
 * In some contexts they are, like "Oh no, a weinerhead!"  &mdash; mark &#9998; 03:40, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * A friend and I were just commenting on the use of "Yes" and "No" together as a sort of pragmatic thing, I guess. "Yeah, no, I thought it was different."  "No, yeah that's just what I'm talking about."  It's possible that there's really only one interjection in that the first "yes" or "no" have to do with the previous information, while the second "yes" or "no" is there to sort of draw attention to what's being said.  Or so is my analysis.  --Alcarilinque 09:33, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

You should have in mind two "notions" of interjection. (1) interjections are words like oh, ah, gosh and the like. (2) interjections are sentence-words / words without sintactical connection to other words (or, at least, to finite verbs). You are arguing for yes and no to be interjections according to the first notion, but yes and no are plain interjections if you follow the second one, that is, the morpho-syntactical / distributional notion. Now most parts of speech have morpho-syntactical/distributional definitions. Interjections are supposed to follow them. So our "intuitive" first notion should be replaced by the second one: yes and no are interjections. Velho 18:54, 18 October 2005 (UTC).


 * This is fully true. It is not the way in which a word is uttered that makes it belong to a certain word class, it is its grammatical roles/functions/properties. 83.226.192.192 (talk) 15:18, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Onomatopoeia
Would onomatopoeia be linguistically/grammatically classified as interjections? HHNHFJFHJDHSKJDHH
 * The sets of interjections and onomatopoeia most probably overlap somewhere (though that 'somewhere' is different for each language); but onomatopoeia is a phonosemantically defined category, whereas the category of interjections is mainly syntactically defined. In other words, they're not defined on the same level. In other words, no. For example, languages can (and do) have onomatopoeic verbs and nouns, which obviously don't qualify as interjections.  &mdash; mark &#9998; 18:50, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * OK. Thanks!

Booyaka
Why does booyaka redirect here? If it's a synonym, I think it should be explained on the page. mrbartjens &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.251.111.252 (talk • contribs) 2006-01-08 11:00:59 UTC.
 * Articles for deletion/Booyaka Uncle G 20:28, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Discourse particle
Can someone expand the article to explain the difference between interjection and discourse particle? I read both of them hard and loud, and, like, uhm, failed to see, er,... any particular difference, y'know, sorry! mikka (t) 08:38, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
 * It's the same, and while I like the precision of the term discourse particle, interjection is the most widely used term for these kind of words. So they'd need to be merged. &mdash; mark &#9998; 08:44, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

- I disagree. I think there is a clear divide in their meanings and usage, such as the fact that discourse particles are usually used as discourse boundaries, e.g. for changing a new topic, or when the speaker changes, (such as 'anyway', or 'so') and almost always occur at the start of a sentence. Interjections on the other hand, whilst also carrying no semantic meaning in this context, are not even recognised words as such, and so have no meaning in any context, other than their use as a pause filler whilst the speaker thinks of what he/she wants to say next. There are many other differences between the two, but obviously I won't list them all here. Whilst they are similar, I believe that there is significant difference between the two to keep them as separate articles.

I'm absolutely against merging the articles! Most interjections aren't discourse particles and most discourse particles aren't interjections. Velho 18:31, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I think I agree with you. Why not update discourse particle accordingly? &mdash; mark &#9998; 18:21, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

It is worth noting that interjection are usually sentence-words or, at least, they cannot combine with (and therefore replace) finite verbs. Particles, on the other side, cannot stay alone as "sentences" and they do combine with regular sentences (including finite verbs). Secondly, the notion of particle is not strictly morphosyntactical. Particles do not inflect and can be placed almost anywhere inside a sentence, but their specific trait is semantical or indeed pragmatical. Particles do not change the semantic value of the words they combine with, they rather give a pragmatical (or even semantical) "plus" to the whole sentence. Velho 18:13, 19 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I've removed the merge tags which have been here since Feb. I think they should never have been added. If you don't understand the difference, you cannot assume there is no difference.  If the articles do not make clear what the difference between the 2 concepts is, that is definitely a deficiency that needs to be corrected.   However, adding Merge tags is the wrong way to instigate that. jnestorius(talk) 14:46, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Pop culture issue
What do the rest of you think of mentioning the pop culture item Schoolhouse Rock, which had an episode on interjections that played for years on U.S. television and made the term very familiar to a generation here. It's both off-topic and on-topic, so I have mixed feelings about adding it. Lawikitejana 16:41, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

I think this should totally be in there! --Grid 21:18, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Theory on phonology?
I find it fascinating that some English interjections have such a unique phonology. Are there any theories about why that is? Fishal 23:31, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
 * At a guess (I'm no expert) I'd say it's because interjections express emotions or states of mind rather ideas, and so are more primitive, allowing them to be unconstrained by the stricter phonology of the words in a language that express more advanced concepts. &mdash; Paul G 05:28, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Other Languages
I find it quite useless to have other languages here. Aren't there enough English examples to give an idea what interjections are? And if we start including other languages, then we have to include all. So I'll delete the other languages of this article. If you're not ok, you will need to state why you think it's reasonable to have other language examples here. Zorroz Msgs  09:46, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Pronunciation of "ugh"
The pronunciation of "ugh" looks wrong to me &mdash; I think it should be /əx/ or /ɜːh/. The sound /ʌ/ is the vowel in the standard British English pronunciation of "up". In some US American dialects, this might be similar to or coincide with /ə/ or /ɜ(ː)/, but to use /ʌ/ for either of these sounds (which I think would be the appropriate pronunciation) is incorrect. Personally (and I am a British English-speaker), I would say /əx/ to express disgust with a person and /ɜː(h)/ for a disgusting thing.

I note however that my dictionaries a range of pronunciations:


 * OED (2nd ed.): "/ʊh/, /ʌh/, /ɜːh/, /ʊx/, etc"
 * Chambers (1998 ed.): /ʌx/, /ʌg/, /ʊh/, /ɜːh/

some of which sound very odd. Both dictionaries do however give an earlier meaning of "representing the sound of a cough", so maybe the stranger-sounding pronunciations apply to this sense. &mdash; Paul G 05:38, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Glottal stop
Ahem [ əʔəm ], or [ʔəhɛm] ("attention!") contains a glottal stop that is common in German.

It's been a while since I've studied German, but I don't remember encountering any glottal stops in the language. Also, wouldn't "uh-oh" be a better example than "ahem"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.24.189.88 (talk) 19:27, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, there is a stop - but not in ähm but in öhm. --AndreGer (talk) 14:44, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

"Excuse me!"
"Excuse me" and "That's mine" are sentences. One a command, the other a statement. The "Hey" in "Hey, that's mine" is an interjection. I don't feel like being the grammar police and fixing it, but wanted to point that out. For what it's worth, they could be counted as Exclamatory sentences (which do overlap the Declaratory and Imperative [statement and command] sentence types. But being Exclamatory does not automatically make something an interjection. four-tildes

"Fire!"
In the third paragraph of the introduction, "Fire!" is listed as an interjection in the context of a soldier. Wouldn't this be a command and thus a complete sentence rather than an interjection? Tphill (talk) 06:51, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Part of Speech and History
For any followers of this page who may care to know, I plan on contributing some information to this article, particularly regarding interjections as a part of speech (or not) and how they can be classified, which there seems to be some differing ideas about in the literature. I also think it would be helpful (and interesting) to provide a little history on interjections, i.e., that they can be traced back to use in Latin and Greek, how interjections have been thought of in respect to classification over the years, records of interjections spoken in the 18th and 19th centuries, etc.

The sources I'll be using to add this information are:

Ameka, F. (1992). Interjections: The universal yet neglected part of speech. Journal of Pragmatics, 18(2-3), 101-118. Retrieved from https://login.ezproxy.uta.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.uta.edu/docview/58242074?accountid=7117

Meinard, M. E. M. (2015). Distinguishing onomatopoeias from interjections. Journal of Pragmatics, 76, 150-168. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2014.11.011

Norrick, N. R. (2009). Interjections as pragmatic markers. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(5), 866-891. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2008.08.005

Traugott, E. C. (2015). “Ah, pox o’ your pad-lock”: Interjections in the Old Bailey Corpus 1720-1913. Journal of Pragmatics, 86, 68-73. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2015.05.013

Wharton, T. (2003). Interjections, language, and the 'showing/saying' continuum. Pragmatics & Cognition, 11(1): 173-215.

A couple of these (Ameka and Wharton) are already briefly cited in this Wiki article but have lots of additional valuable info on interjections that I think is worth adding. If anyone knows of any other good sources that may be useful in this endeavor, please do share! Alena b (talk) 01:19, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Distinctions, Meaning/Use, Emotion/Expressivity
Working together with my classmates, I hope to contribute to this page by adding to the following:

-I plan on add to the section "Distinctions"; in particular, briefly clarifying the distinction between interjections and onomatopoeia.

-I also would like to expand on the meaning/use of interjections, discussing both semantic and pragmatic aspects. In particular, I would like to discuss interjections as deictics (discussing their dependence on context).

-In relation to meaning, it also might be interesting to add a section or subsection on interjections in relation to emotion/expressivity.

For my contributions, I will be drawing on information from the following sources (some of which, have already been listed on this page):

Goddard, C. (2014). Interjections and emotion (with special reference to “surprise” and “disgust”). Emotion Review, 6(1), 53-63

Norrick, N. R. (2009). Interjections as pragmatic markers. Journal of pragmatics, 41(5), 866-891. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2008.08.005

Riemer, N. (2014). Comment: Interjections and expressivity. Emotion Review, 6(1), 64-65.

Wierzbicka, A. (1992). The semantics of interjection. Journal of pragmatics, 18(2-3), 159-192. https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(92)90050-L

Wilkins, D. P. (1992). Interjections as deictics. Journal of Pragmatics, 18(2-3), 119-158.

I look forward to working with other followers/contributers of this page, and hope to hear feedback/thoughts from other collaborators. Natnicmo (talk) 01:01, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Grammatical use of Interjections, Particles vs Interjections, Interjections in an EFL setting
I plan to contribute to the distinction section by included differences between particles and interjections. Additionally, I plan to add on to how interjections are learned in a foreign language. Finally, I would like to contribute more information towards the grammatical use of interjections in English. My contributions will come from the following sources.

Ameka, Felix. "Interjections: The universal yet neglected part of speech. https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(92)90048-G

Gladkova, Anna, Ulla Vanhatalo, and Cliff Goddard. "The Semantics of Interjections: An Experimental Study with Natural Semantic Metalanguage." Applied Psycholinguistics, vol. 37, no. 4, 2016, pp. 841-865.

Meinard, Maruszka E. M. "Distinguishing Onomatopoeias from Interjections." Journal of Pragmatics: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language Studies, vol. 76, 2015, pp. 150-168.

Norrick, Neal R. "Interjections as Pragmatic Markers." Journal of Pragmatics, vol. 41, no. 5, 2009, pp. 866-891.

Reber, Elisabeth. "Interjections in the EFL Classroom: Teaching Sounds and Sequences."ELT Journal, vol. 65, no. 4, 2011, pp. 365-375.

CA108017 (talk) 04:09, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Emotive interjections do not just express negative emotions
This article talks about emotive interjections, but then just exemplifies these by listing interjections that express disgust. Emotive interjections can express positive emotions, such as "io", an interjection expressing joy. Vorbee (talk) 17:58, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Removing examples from other languages
The section adds nothing to the article but dictionary entries for some interjections. Compare this to for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copula_(linguistics)#In_particular_languages where one can see different usages, grammar, and other quirks each language has. 8ya (talk • contribs) 11:13, 18 April 2022 (UTC)