– whose defining features are the infrequency with which they combine with other words to form phrases, their loose connection to other elements in clauses, and their tendency to express emotive meaning.
In terms of their syntax, they tend not to form constituents with other words and are parenthetical rather than integrated into the clauses in which they occur.
In 1586, William Bullokar wrote the earliest grammar of English, which included a small section on interjections.
His definition of English interjections focused on the semantic and pragmatic dimensions of the words:An interjection is a part of speech that betokeneth a sudden passion of the mind: the signification or meaning of which speech much be understanded by the gesture, countenance, or passion of the speaker, and some time with regard of the person spoken to, or of the thing spoken of.
The most frequent words tagged as interjections in the Corpus of Global Web-Based English (GloWbE)[A] include yes, no, oh, yeah, hi, hey, wow, hello, ah, ha, blah, eh, yep, o, alas, haha, cheers, huh, and hmm.
[6] There are a number of English interjections with religious connotations that are derived from nouns (e.g., Jesus, Christ, God, heavens, hell).
Meinard argues that because direct speech is syntactically isolated from the clause that introduces it, words like pop and wow in these examples behave more like interjections than adverbs.
[16] Florian Coulmas defines routine formulae as "highly conventionalized prepatterned expressions whose occurrence is tied to more or less standard communication situations.
[8]: 109–110 Other linguists, such as David P. Wilkins, have argued that routine formulae share important characteristics with interjections in both English and Italian, and distinctions like those that Ameka discusses only suggest that routine formulae are "a distinct pragmatic and semantic subtype of interjections," not a lexical category of their own.
[9]: 1361fn In exceptional cases, English interjections derived from nouns can take modifiers (e.g., holy cow, hot damn, bloody hell, etc.).
[19] Conventionalized pairs like oh boy, oh my, fuck yeah, aw shucks, good bye, ho hum, etc.
[4]: 88 English interjections can be used to greet people or call attention (e.g., hey, hello), show agreement (e.g., yes, amen, okay) or disagreement (e.g., no, uh-uh), indicate understanding (e.g., oh, uh-huh) or lack thereof (e.g., huh), demand silence (e.g., sh), make a polite request (e.g., please), show disinterest (e.g., meh), or even invoke magic (e.g., abracadabra).
[19] Many of the most common English interjections (see § Typical examples) are primarily involved in interactions between users of the language, maintaining the integrity of the conversation through backchanneling and marking affirmation.
Semantically speaking, English interjections do not refer; that is, while other lexical classes like nouns and verbs typically reference particular participants or processes that exist or could exist in the world, English interjections tend to merely express the internal states of their users.
[22] Many express emotions such as anger (e.g., damn), disgust (e.g., eww, yuck), surprise (e.g., wow), regret (e.g., alas), or embarrassment (e.g., shucks).
[19] They can also signify pain (e.g., ow), bad smells (e.g., pew), a mistake (e.g., oops), or a sudden realization (e.g., eureka).
[8]: 108 [9]: 25 This disruption to the typical prosody of the clause is represented in writing through punctuation – such as commas, dashes, and parentheses.
Spelling pronunciations often emerge for interjections that feature these atypical phonemes, including /tət tət/ for tut-tut and /əɡ/ for ugh.