The Ground and the Archetype: two situations from which to describe the conversion and derivation of interjections

• Published in: SKASE journal of theoretical linguistics Vol. 20; no. 1; pp. 127 - 152
• Main Author: Meinard, Maruszka Eve-Mane
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: The Slovak Association for the Study of English 01.06.2023
• Subjects: France; United Kingdom
• ISSN: 1336-782X; 1336-782X

This article aims at offering an analysis of interjections and some items called "expletive slot fillers " in terms of word-formation processes. We will offer a semantic description of interjections within a Cognitive Grammar framework. We will make use of the Script-Theory to offer a semantic description of adjectives derived from interjections. We will display some of the operations underlying the derivation and conversion of interjections. We will show that primary interjections are produced by a word-formation process that we call "reshaping" and will show that this word-formation process can be observed at the phonemic, lexical and syntactic level. At the syntactic level, this word formation process serves to produce "expletive slot fillers " (e.g. taboo words like damned and fucking), we call it "Syntactic Adjustment" (SA). Finally, we will compare two different types of adjectival forms: true adjectives derived from interjections (like yucky and yummy) on the one hand, and interjections that undergo the SA process (like damned and fucking), on the other hand. The SA consists in integrating interjections to syntactic structures, generally thanks to the addition of a past or present participle morpheme ([[damn] + [-ed] + NOUN]). Keywords: interjections, word-formation processes, open-class words, inferences