Chapter published in:
Imperatives and Directive Strategies
Edited by Daniël Van Olmen and Simone Heinold
[Studies in Language Companion Series 184] 2017

Crossing the categorial divide

Imperative and interjection conversions in Romance

| CELGA-ILTEC
Imperatives and interjections are distinct categories differing in both form and function. As the prototypical directive verb form, an imperative exhibits both typical as well as unique morphosyntactic properties of its class. Interjections are discourse markers anchored in pragmatics and peripheral to phrasal grammar. However, imperatives and interjections also exhibit a number of similar properties which underlie instances of transcategorization between the two. With examples from a variety of Romance languages, I explore the shared features and processes leading to transcategorization, touch upon the language origins of imperatives and interjections and refer to Heine’s (1993) overlap model to argue that a combination of shared features and frequency constitute the principle triggers for these processes.
Published online: 11 April 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.184.10swe
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