Contenu du sommaire : L'interjection : jeux et enjeux, sous la direction de Claude Buridant

The aim of this paper is to draw some new specific aspects of the interjection's semiotic functions. This analysis will allow us to comprehend in a better way the type of category we are dealing with. Within this perspective, our investigation is based on the semiotic comparison between interjections and onomatopoeia. We suggest that two levels of formation exist and that the distinction operated between them will reveal the semiotic specificity of this enigmatic sign – « ce canard boiteux… des signes » – that interjection is.

In this article, we support two hypotheses: the first one states that languages are more or less “interjectional”, while the second one states that, compared to French, Romanian is more interjectional, not only from the point of view of the system, but also from the point of view of the use. These two hypotheses, originally based on empirical observation, are now supported by precise linguistic arguments: the first one is a study of the Romanian equivalents of a French interjection (eh bien !), and the second one is a more general contrastive approach to interjectional words based on the translation of a spoken Romanian corpus into French.

Interjection is conceived in this paper as an epistemic modaliser whose function on the utterance level is that of an evaluation marker. The interjection as a linguistic sign is at the same time an index, an icon and a symbol. Describing the uses of the Romanian interjections VAI < vae lat. and Z?U < Deus lat., the author conjectures that these interjectional modalisers undergo a grammaticalization based upon generalized delocutivity and axiological investment. The argument focusses on the grammaticalization of VAI, whose gradual conversion from exophrastic to endophrastic use relies on seven steps.

This paper deals with the problem of the construction of the meaning of interjection. This category of words is usually described as contextually dependent. We claim that there are some semantic values in the interjection which decide about the choice the speaker is making. We refer to two notions —deixis and anaphora— in order to reveal what is the specific contribution of each interjection (deictic element), what can be conventional and specifically memorized, and what depends on the context. We want to show that interjections are indexical expressions, but that it is necessary, in order to identify other semantic constituents, to use the information given by the interpretive paraphrases, the previous context or the stereotyped knowledge.

The French interjections hé and eh concern not only the oral expression of emotions, but also their transcription. They cast doubt on universality, since the grammarians of vernacular languages have to admit that they are new, and that they do not correspond with Latin of Greek interjections. Would the Frenchman be exposed to peculiar emotions, alien to other nations? Do “animal spirits” overcome him, more eagerly than they do into his European neighbours? Those aspirated interjections seem to come out of the biological nature of man, whereas it is influenced by the inhabited “climates” and by the collective or the individual temperament.

In this paper, we analyse and compare the interjections proceeding from movement verbs in imperative: « allez, allons » in French and « anda, venga, vamos, vaya » in Spanish. The aim is to show the use and the process of grammaticalisation of these interjections in both languages. We also demonstrate that they aren't simple discursive particles within lexical meaning seeing that it's their polysemy that creates most of the problems in translation. The contrastive analyse brings supplementary data to a study which would be undoubtedly unfinished if it would be done in only one language.

Treated as the poor parent of linguistic studies, the interjection has hardly benefited from a better status with lexicographers. We shall try to compensate for this by looking a specific area of language: that of the interjection accompanied by a gesture. Example of this: such as « plouf plouf » are particularly frequent in nursery rhymes but can of course be found elsewhere, as the examples « chut » and « dehors » illustrate.

The fictional works in Old and Middle French display with a particular clarity some issues raised by the interjection, while at the same time, providing their own solutions. We think about, among others, semiological (relative to the sign's arbitrariness), syntactical (phrasal freedom or constraint), or semantical questions (textual creation and stereotypes, affective or conceptual expression). In order to consider some of the issues raised by Medieval language and writing, we will work on a double corpus: the only manuscript from the 13th century which keeps the “chantefable” Aucassin et Nicolette; and the manuscript from the beginning of the 15th century which provides the best version of the Roman de Mélusine of Jean d'Arras. First we will consider the forms and functions of the interjections, in the poetics of rhythm and the building of the specific effects of dramatization in Aucassin et Nicolette. The reading of Mélusine will lead us to the study of the lexigenesis, to the sequence of writing, and therefore, to punctuation, and also to the translation of certain interjections. We surmise that these two texts will not be viewed as evidence of the evolution of a similar set of problems or of a similar interjectional form, but as illustrations of specific questions raised by two states language two centuries apart.

In this paper, we study the interjection in some numeric discourse. The work on this kind of numeric corpus obliges to interrogate about the borders between onomatopoeia and interjection. In the internet discourse, it is less the role of expressive “super-enounciation” of the interjection that is exploited (this role being held by the neographemes, the onomatopoeias and the smileys, these ones not yet used at the most of their potential meaning) than its role of first slice or splint of conversation confrontation of new practices of writing thus obliges to create functional categories which transform the names as onomatopoeias (by the graphic deformations who are supposed imitate a certain intonation) or transform them as interjections (by marking the key-moments of interactional starts again). So certain papers of the internet are less a written orality than a real living writing.