Where have all the interjections gone

Aimée Lahaussois (1)

1 HTL - HTL - Histoire des Théories Linguistiques - UMR 7597

Interjections have been described as " universal yet neglected " (Ameka 1992) and from the perspective of descriptive linguistics, this certainly seems to be the case: in contemporary descriptions of endangered languages, it is rare to find a chapter or even section on interjections. In this presentation, I shall explore a corpus of descriptive grammars of languages of Nepal and look at the place given to interjections. I shall then explore the structures of these grammars and the backgrounds of the linguists who wrote them, in order to find some explanations for the noticeable absence of interjections.

Mots clés: Nepal; grammaticography; interjection; endangered languages

Domaines: Histoire, Philosophie et Sociologie des sciences; Linguistique

Aimée Lahaussois. Where have all the interjections gone: A look into the place of interjections in contemporaray grammars of endangered languages. Carlos Assunção; Gonçalo Fernandes; R. Kemmler. Tradition and Innovation in the History of Linguistics, Nodus Publikationen, pp.186-195, 2016, 978-3-89-323-021-1. ⟨hal-01361106⟩