interjektió

Interjektió, or interjection, is a word or short phrase used to express a speaker’s attitude or immediate reaction and is typically syntactically independent from the surrounding sentence. The term comes from the Latin interiectio, meaning a “thrown-in” element.

Interjections serve pragmatic rather than propositional functions. They express emotion such as surprise, pain, joy, relief, or anger, or they may address the listener directly. They can also act as discourse markers, signaling stance, attention, hesitation, or agreement, and they often occur as fillers (um, hmm) in spontaneous speech. Because of their focus on tone and affect, interjections are highly variable across languages.

Morphology and syntax of interjections are typically distinct from other word classes. They are usually uninflected and rely on prosody, facial expression, and punctuation to convey meaning. In written text they are often set off by exclamation marks or parentheses and rarely participate in the grammatical structure of a sentence. In many languages, interjections can function as standalone utterances or be inserted into larger phrases for emphasis, though their exact status may overlap with particles or exclamatives in some grammars.

Cross-linguistically, interjections form a universal, but highly language-specific, category. Their sounds and spellings reflect phonetic inventories and cultural conventions of each language. Examples include English oh, wow, ouch, alas; Spanish ¡ay!, ¡eh!; or Japanese ああ (aa) and うわ (uwa). Overall, interjections provide a compact means of conveying immediate affect and speaker attitude.