Argument structure of emotive interjections: Evidence from Polish

Abstract

The present article offers the first principled assessment of the argument structure of emotive interjections from a cognitive, constructional, and prototype-driven perspective. The evidence demonstrates that, in Polish, emotive interjections are tied to argument-structure patterns – they form constructions with (experiencer, causer, recipient, patient, theme, goal, locative, and addressee) complements which, from a categorial perspective, are most similar to arguments within the argument-adjunct continuum. Consequently, a radical view on the asyntagmatic, non-constructional, and syntax-external behavior of emotive interjections should be replaced by a more nuanced proposal: Emotive interjections – including their prototypical representative – exhibit syntactic properties that may approximate, to a greater or lesser extent, the syntax of other lexical classes traditionally viewed as syntagmatic and constructional.