The present paper provides a systematic description of interjections in a moribund Eastern Kalahari Khoe language – Tjwao. After analysing original evidence within a prototype-driven approach, the authors conclude the following: (a) in Tjwao, the interjectional lexical class constitutes an internally diverse category confined between the canonical centre and a non-prototypical periphery; and (b) primary emotive interjections exhibit the highest degree of canonicity and extra-systematicity, while the canonicity and extra-systematicity of secondary phatic interjections is lowest.

How do people answer polar questions? In this fourteen-language study of answers to questions in conversation, we compare the two main strategies; first, interjection-type answers such as uh-huh (or equivalents yes, mm, head nods, etc.), and second, repetition-type answers that repeat some or all of the question. We find that all languages offer both options, but that there is a strong asymmetry in their frequency of use, with a global preference for interjection-type answers. We propose that this preference is motivated by the fact that the two options are not equivalent in meaning. We argue that interjection-type answers are intrinsically suited to be the pragmatically unmarked, and thus more frequent, strategy for confirming polar questions, regardless of the language spoken. Our analysis is based on the semantic-pragmatic profile of the interjection-type and repetition-type answer strategies, in the context of certain asymmetries inherent to the dialogic speech act structure of question–answer sequences, including sequential agency and thematic agency. This allows us to see possible explanations for the outlier distributions found in ǂĀkhoe Haiǁom and Tzeltal.

The aim of the present study is to conduct a comprehensive corpus analysis of the constituent order of main declarative clauses with the interjection hwæt ‘what’ in the clause-initial position in Old English prose texts. On the basis of his analysis of Ælfric's Lives of Saints and Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica, Walkden (2013) claims that such hwæt-clauses pattern with subordinate clauses with respect to their verb position. My study confirms Walkden's basic empirical findings that hwæt-clauses do not behave like typical main clauses as far as their constituent order is concerned. However, there are numerous differences between them and subordinate clauses introduced by hwæt, that is, free relatives and embedded questions. The analysis suggests that the conditions favoring the use of the V-final order in main hwæt-clauses resemble the ones identified for ordinary V-final main clauses in Bech 2012. What is more, the study shows that the functional differences between hwæt- and hwæt þa-clauses noted in Brinton 1996 are blurred in Old English prose because of a regular variation between hwæt þa-S and hwæt-S-þa patterns. The data also suggest that þa in hwæt þa-clauses should rather be analyzed as an independent clause element.