Author(s)

Anmin Mao

School of Foreign Languages, Yangtze University, Jingzhou, China.

Due to their heterogeneous and multi-functional property, interjections investigated in this paper are narrowed down to emotive interjections only. A respective subdivision of primary and secondary interjections is made at the beginning for a better elaboration on the following topic concerning the subtle relation between conceptuality and context-sensitivity of interjections. Specific discussions unfold around three questions: 1) Does interjections encode any conceptual content? 2) To what degree do these concepts differ with regard to the five different subtypes of emotive interjections? 3) From the perspective of interjections’ conceptuality, what functions would context perform in encoding the hidden emotive messages? Furthermore, in view of the oral nature of interjections, paralinguistic and gestural factors also count very much in the interpretation of interjections. The conclusion is presented by reflecting on several improvable aspects in the paper which are worthy of further study.

Emotive Interjections, Concept, Context, Grammaticalization, Paralanguage

Mao, A. (2017) Conceptuality and Context-Sensitivity of Emotive Interjections. Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 7, 41-51. doi: 10.4236/ojml.2017.71004.