Abstract
The paper tries to identify the special problems posed by the study of interjection based on the examination of a corpus of texts from the old Romanian (1600–1780), referring to texts from modern Romanian. We have watched how certain interjectional formations have acquired, through diachronic expansion, new grammatical, semantic and pragmatic values. The structure of the paper is the following: the introduction (§1) summarizes the author’s position on the status of the interjection category at a morphosyntactic, semantic and pragmatic level (§1.1) and on the relation between different linguistic structures and their grammaticalization / pragmaticalization process (§1.2). The second section (§2) refers to the specific routes followed by the evolution of the various categories of the analysed interjections, from the old Romanian to the modern Romanian: the presentatives adecă, iată, ni (§2.1), the hortatives haide, ni (§2.2), the addressing particles bre, măi (§2.3), the connectors with demarcation signal function adevăr, amin (§2.4). The third section (§3) has as objective the description of a species of delocutive derivation, illustrated in Romanian by the lexicalized semantic variants of the secondary interjection Doamne!. The study concludes with several final considerations regarding the results of the research (§4).
Highlights
Has as objective the description of a species of delocutive derivation, illustrated in Romanian by the lexicalized semantic variants of the secondary interjection
The authors who were recently involved in the study of interjection agree that it has an important function in communication and that its meanings and functions differ from one language to another1
B) From the semantic point of view, the interjection is characterized by a vague signification, which allows its use in a large number of contexts that influence its prototypical meaning
Summary
B) From the semantic point of view, the interjection is characterized by a vague signification, which allows its use in a large number of contexts that influence its prototypical meaning. These contextual meanings, fixed over time, are conventionalized. C) From a pragmatic point of view, the category of interjection presents a certain homogeneity considering the performative nature of the definition basis and the ability of the interjection to evolve towards other functional categories At this level, the interjection interacts with formations such as the exclamation, the vocative, and the imperative, in performing linguistic acts such as warning, injuries, insult, oath or curse, etc. The “shift” is a gradual process in which forms and constructions, initially expressing primary, concrete, and objective lexical meanings, through repeated use in local syntactic contexts, fulfil more abstract, pragmatic, interpersonal functions based on the speaker’s reaction (at Traugott, 1995, p. 32, “subjectification”)
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