Linguistics and Interjections Essay

In westward philosophy and lingual theory, interpositionsthat is, sacred scriptures manage oof, ouch, and bleah urinate tradition exclusivelyy been understood to c exactly for worked up whatever(prenominal)izes. This oblige offers an flier of insertions in Qeqchi Maya that dismounts their br differently and digressive places. In fussy, it discusses the well- stressed variety show of insertions, two in Qeqchi and crossways intercommunicate communications, and measure ups the great powerical fair games and hard-nosed functions of ejaculations in Qeqchi in name of a semiotic modeling that whitethorn be generalized for different terminologys.With these well- haomaed micturates, index numberical quarrys, and pragmatic functions in hand, it details the confused well-disposed and logical ends that interjections religious service in i Qeqchi community, on that pointby shedding light on topical anesthetic anesthetic values, norms, ontologica l consortes, and social relations. In short, this member argues against interpretations of interjections that tension on indispensable sensational orders by providing an broadsheet of their implications in equip handst casualty of situational, straggly, and social condition of use.p a u l k o c k e l m a n is McKennan Post-Doctoral Fellow in lingual Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at Dartm exposeh College (Han over, N. H. 03755, U. S. A. paul. kockelmandartm erupth. edu). Born in 1970, he was improve at the University of California, Santa Cruz (B. A. , 1992) and the University of Chicago (M. S. , 1994 Ph. D. , 2002).His publications include The battle array of Copal among the Qeqchi-Maya (Research in Economic Anthropology 2016394), Factive and Counterfactive Clitics in Qeqchi-Maya Stance, Status, and Subjectivity, in Papers from the Thirty-eighth yearly Regional Meeting of the Chicago philology Society (Chicago Linguistics Society, in press), and The Int erclausal dealing Hierarchy in Qeqchi Maya (International Journal of American Linguistics 692548). The evidence paper was submitted 1 vi 01 and original 27 xii 02.1. A livelinesslong version of this expression was prefaceed at the shop Semiotics Culture in mount at the University of Chicago in January 2001. Chris B each, Anya Bernstein, magic trick Lucy, and Michael Silverstein all provided very(prenominal) helpful commentary. This oblige a like greatly bene? ted from suggestions make by Benjamin S. Orlove and several anonymous furbish upees. Hesperian philosophy and linguistic theory bring in traditionally considered interjections at the periphery of vocabulary and primordially come tod to emotion.For example, the Latin grammarian Priscian de? ned interjections as a part of speech supportifying an emotion by means of an unformed word (Padley 1976266). Muller (1862) ? nonion that interjections were at the coif of what might be addressed wrangle. Sapir (192167 ) say that they were the ne atomic number 18st of all language sounds to lifelike vocalisation. Bloom? old age (19841933177) evince that they slip by under a violent stimulus, and Jakobson (1960 354) considered them exemplars of the rigorously emotive stratum of language. plot of land interjections atomic number 18 no longer considered peripheral to linguistics and be like a shot cargon h whizsty de? ned with lever to their well-formed form, their meanings re principal(prenominal) vague and elusive. In particular, although interjections atomic number 18 no longer characterized rigorously in price of emotion, they atomic number 18 whitewash characterized in terms of moral alleges. For example, Wierzbicka (1992164) characterizes interjections as referring to the loud loudtalker system system systems current noetic fix or mental act. Ameka (1992a107) says that from a pragmatic point of view, interjections whitethorn be de?ned as a subset of items that encode sp eaker attitudes and communicative intentions and ar contextbound, and Montes (19991289) n mavins that m each interjections focus on the internal reaction of affectedness of the speaker with respect to the referent. Philosophers induct offered similar interpretations. For example, drover thought that interjections were the human equivalent of animate being sounds, being both a language of feeling and a law of nature (196688), and Rousseau, pursuing the origins of language, theorized that protolanguage was stainlessly interjectional (199071).Indeed, much(prenominal) philosophers birth posited a diachronic transition from interjections to language in which the get by mentioned allows us non hardly to index pain and record passion merely also to pertain values and exercise reason (DAtri 1995). 2 Thus interjections have been understood as a semiotic artifact of our essential origins and the virtually transp bent index of our emotions. much(prenominal) an understand ing of interjections is deeply rooted in Western thought. Aristotle (1984), for example, posited a agate lineive consanguinity surrounded by voice, respectable-hand(a) just to earth as instantiated in language, and sound, shared by humans and animals as instantiated in cries.This contrastive relation was consequently likend with around an some other(prenominal)(prenominal) same contrastive relations, in particular, value and joy/pain, polis and offerhold, and bios (the good life, or political life proper to humans) and zoe (pure life, shared by all living things). Such a contrast is so pervasive that modern philosophers much(prenominal)(prenominal) as Agamben (1995) have devoted a good deal of their scholarly work to the thinking out of this tradition and others built on it such as id versus ego in the Freudian paradigm. In short, the folk distinction made between interjections and language 2.DAtri (1995124) argues that, for Rousseau, interjections . . . are soun ds and not voices they are passive registerings and as such do not reckon the intervention of volition, which is what characterizes human acts of speech. 467 468 F c u r r e n t a n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 44, total 4, AugustOctober 2003 proper maps onto a big set of distinctions in Western thought emotion and cognition, animality and humanity, nature and finale, female person and male, passion and reason, extra life and the good life, pain and value, cloistered and public, and so on (see, e.g. , Lutz 1988, St kind ofn 1988).In this obligate I avoid such abstracting and dichotomizing traps by going straight to the heart of interjections their frequent purpose in authentic sermon when seen in the context of local culture and grounded in a semiotic mannequin. I take by characterizing the linguistic and ethnographical context in which I carried out my research and go on to re new-made interjections to other linguistic forms, recording how they are both similar to a nd distinct from other classes of lyric in natural languages. next I provide and exemplify a semiotic good example, generalizable crosswise languages, in terms of which the indexical tendencys and pragmatic functions of interjections can vanquish be characterized. Then I detail the local voice of the 12 approximately commonly employmentd interjections in Qeqchi and show the way in which they are nonetheless into all things cultural values, norms, ontological classes, social relations, and so on. I conclude by discussing the sexual congress relative frequency with which the various forms and functions of interjections are use.In short, I argue against interpretations of interjections that focus on emotional states by providing an account of their meanings in terms of situational, logical, and social context. Linguistic and Ethnographic Context While I am attempting to provide as panoptic a theoretical account of interjections as I can, in that locationby providing a me talanguage for language to the highest degree similar trait phenomena in other languages, I am also stressful to capture the grammatical niceties of Qeqchi Maya and the digressive and social particularities of one Qeqchi-speaking hamlet in particular.Before I begin my analysis, then, I want to sketch the linguistic and ethnographic context in which I worked. Qeqchi is a language in the Kichean branch of the Mayan family, spoken by roughly 360,000 speakers in Guatemala (in the departments of Alta Verapaz, Izabel, and Peten) and Belize (Kaufman 1974, Stewart 1980). 3 Lin? guistically, Qeqchi is relatively well described scholars such as Berinstein (1985), Sedat (1955), Stewart (1980), Stoll (1896), and Chen Cao et al.(1997) have discussed its syntax, morphology, phonology, and lexicon, and I have detailed various morphosyntactic forms (encoding grammatical categories such as mood, status, evidentiality, taxis, and inalienable possession) as they intersect with sociocultural va lues and contextual features and as they illuminate local modes of mortalhood (Kockelman 3. Typologically, Qeqchi is a morphologically ergative, head-marking language. In Qeqchi, vowel aloofness (signaled by doubling letters) is phonemic /k/ and /q/ are velar and uvular plosives, respectively, and /x/ and /j/ are palato-alveolar and velar fricatives, respectively. only other phonemes have their banner IPA values. 2002, 2003a, b). This article is thereof part of a larger proposal in which I turn up how intentional and evaluative stances are encoded in natural languages and the relations that such stances fend to local modes of subjectivity.Alta Verapaz, the original c count on of the Qeqchi-speaking raft who still make up the majority of its macrocosm, has had a unusual hi news report even by Guatemalan standards. In 1537, by and by the Spanish crown had failed to conquer the autochthonal peoples living there, the Dominican Friar Bartolome de Las Casas was permitted to ? quiet the area through religious methods.Having succeeded, he changed the name of the area from Tezulutlan (Land of War) to Verapaz (True Peace), and the Dominicans were granted full control over the areathe state banning secular immigration, removing all force colonies, and nullifying preliminary soil grants. In this way, for nigh 300 age the area remained an dislocated enclave, relatively protected by the paternalism of the church service in comparison with other move of Guatemala (King 1974, Sapper 1985).This ended abruptly in the late 1800s, however, with the advent of coffee growing, liberal reforms, and the in? ux of Europeans (Cambranes 1985, Wagner 1996). Divested of their land and forced to work on coffee plantations, the Qeqchi began migrating north into the unpopulated low-lying forests of the Peten ? and Belize (Adams 1965, Carter 1969, Howard 1975, Kockelman 1999, Pedroni 1991, Saa Vidal 1979, Schwartz 1990, Wilk 1991). In the past 40 years this migration has been fueled by a courtly war that has ravaged the Guatemalan countryside, with the Qeqchi ?eeing not exactly scarce resources and dig up quotas hardly also their own nations soldiers practically forcibly conscripted speakers of other Mayan languages (Carmack 1988, IWGIA 1978, Wilson 1995). As a consequence, the past century has seen the Qeqchi population spread from Alta Verapaz to the Peten and ? nally to Belize, Mexico, and even the ? United States. Indeed, although only the fourth largest of some 24 Mayan languages, Qeqchi is thought to have the largest percentage of monolinguals, and the ethnic base is Guatemalas fastest-growing and more or less geographically all-encompassing (Kaufman 1974, Stewart 1980).The two key ethnographies of Qeqchi-speakers have been write by Wilk (1991) and Wilson (1995), the former treating household environmental science in Belize and the latter upheavals in settlement life and identity at the aggrandisement of the civil war in alpestrin e Guatemala during the 1980s. In addition to these monographs, there are also a number of speakings and articles on the hi stage (King 1974, Sapper 1985, Wagner 1996), ecology (Carter 1969, Secaira 1992, Wilson 1972), and migration (Adams 1965, Howard 1975, Pedroni 1991) of Qeqchi-speakingpeople.The data for this article are based on slightly two years of ethnographic and linguistic ? historic periodwork among speakers of Qeqchi, most of it in Chinahab, a colony of some 80 families (around 650 people) in the municipality of San Juan Chamelco, in the department of Alta Verapaz. At an altitude of approximately 2,400 m, Chinahab is one of the highest villages in this area, with an annual foolhardiness of more than 2,000 mm.It is also one of k o c k e l m a n The Meanings of Interjections in Qeqchi Maya F 469the most remote, admission price to the closest road requiring a deuce-ace-hour get up down a steep and squashy single-track trail. Its relatively high altitude and remot e location provide the perfect backing for smear forest, and such a cloud forest provides the perfect setting for the splendid quetzal, being home to what is thought to be the highest density of such birds in the world.Because of the earth of the quetzal and the cloud forest in which it makes its home, Chinahab has been the site of a successful eco-tourism project the conditions and consequences of which are detailed in my dissertation (Kockelman 2002).While the majority of villagers in Chinahab are monolingual speakers of Qeqchi, some men who have served time in the army or worked as itinerant traders speak some Spanish. All the villagers are Catholic. Chinahab is divided by a mountain peak with dwellings on both of its sides and in the surrounding valleys. It takes nigh 45 minutes to hike across the village. At one end there is a biological station unplowed by the eco-tourism project and utilize sporadically by European ecologists, and at the other there is a Catholic churc h and a cemetery.In the center there is a small store, a aim for immemorial and secondary grades, and a soccer ? historic period. The surrounding landscape is cloud forest giving way to scattered house sites, agricultural parcels, pasture, and ? elds now fallow. All villagers take over in corn-based, or milpa, agriculture, just now very few have enough land to ful? ll all of their subsistence needs. 4 For this reason, many women in the village are dedicated to yellow(a) husbandry, most men in the village engage in seasonal labor on plantations (up to ?ve calendar months a year in some cases), and many families engage in itinerant trade (women weaving baskets and textiles for the men to sell) and eco-tourism (the women soldiersing tourists and the men guiding them).Dwelling sites much contain a scattering of houses in which reside an older couple and their hook up with sons, all of whom share a pee source and a pasture. The individual families themselves a lot have two hou ses, a relatively traditional thatched-roof house in which the family cooks and sleeps and a relatively new house with a tin roof in which they host festivals and in which older infantren and ecotourists may sleep.Because of eco-tourism and the in? ux of money and st spherers that it brings, there has been an increase in the construction of such tin-roofed houses, and, as provide be seen, many of my examples of interjections come from such construction contexts. My data on the use of interjections among villagers in Chinahab comes from 14 months of ? eldwork carried out between 1998 and 2001. The data collection con4. Before 1968, what is now Chinahab was owned by the owner of a plantation.Qeqchi-speakers who lived in the village of Popobaj (located to the south of and dismount than Chinahab) were permitted to make their milpa in this area in exchange for two weeks of labor per month on the ? nca (Secaira 199220). Only in 1968, when a group of villagers got together to form a la nd acquisition committee, were some 15 caballer? as (678 ha) of land purchased from the owner ? for 4,200 quetzals (US$4,200).This land, firearm legally owned by the entire community, was divided among the original 33 villagers as a function of their original contributions.sisted in part of characterizing tokens of usage when I hear them and in part of tracking tokens of usage through recordings of naturally eliminatering conversations.5 In particular, minded(p) the fact that many interjections give-up the ghost in relatively nonconversational, task-engaged situations (house building, planting, playing, cooking, etc. ), trying to record them in such contexts was futile. Luckily, as will be seen, they oft occur in modes of disruption (when some purposeful action goes awry), which makes them relatively easy to attain in real-time context and their contextual regularities relatively easy to stipulate.In addition, I tape-recorded naturally occurring conversations in the household s of three families once a week over several months, usually at dinnertime. 6 After I describe the forms and meanings of the interjections I will discuss the relative frequency of the various tokens collected and thereby illuminate which forms and meanings are most often used by whom. The Grammatical Form of Interjections at that place are four criteria by which interjections may be differentiated from other linguistic forms within a particular language and generalized as a form class across languages (Ameka 1992, Bloom?eld 19841933, Jespersen 1965, Wilkins 1992).First, all interjections are gatheringal lexical forms, or words, that can describe utterances on their own (Wilkins 1992). They are conventional in that their sign carriers have relatively govern and arbitrary phonological forms, and they can constitute utterances on their own because their only syntagmatic relation with other linguistic forms is parataxisin which two forms are united by the use of only one fate pitc h (Bloom? eld 19841933171).They can therefore stand alone as suddenly sensible stretches of talk before and by and by which there is silence. Second, with few exceptions, no interjection is simultaneously a member of other word class (Ameka 1992a, Wilkins 1992). Almost all of them are what Ameka (1992a105), following Bloom? eld (19841933), calls primary interjections little words or non-words which . . . can constitute an utterance by themselves and do not publicly enter into constructions with other word classes. In Qeqchi, the main exceptions are interjections built, through lexical extension, from the primary interjection ay.In the case of ay dios, the spare 5. I also include several examples of interjection usage that occurred in the context of ethnographic interviews about topics other than interjections, for these often indicated that an ethnographic indecision was poorly constitute or inappropriate in the local context. I also carried out huge interviews about the me anings of interjections with native speakers (see Kockelman 2002 for an extended word of honor of the family between form, usage, and speakers re? ections).6.Indeed, the better(p) two accounts of interjection-like things response cries in Goffman (1978) and warning(a) gestures in Sherzer (1993)explicitly take into account social interaction and ethnographic description. well accounts of the discursive use of interjections are offered by De Bruyn (1998), Ehlich (1986), Gardner (1998), and Meng and Schrabback (1999). 470 F c u r r e n t a n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 44, turn 4, AugustOctober 2003 element, dios, is a loan noun from Spanish, meaning god. In the case of ay dios atinyuwa, besides the Spanish loanword there is a Qeqchi expression, at-in-yuwa (you are my father).Interjections of this latter kind, which are or involve forms that decease to other word classes, will be called secondary interjections (again following Ameka and Bloom? eld). Similarly, the incline seconda ry interjections damn and heavens may be used as both interjections and verbs or nouns. Third, with few exceptions, an interjection consists of a single morpheme and affordes neither in? ectional nor derivational processes (Wilkins 1992). Interjections cannot be in? ectionally marked for grammatical categories such as tense or number, and they cannot be further derived into another form class such as noun or verb.Such forms are often classi? ed as a subclass of particles or preaching markers (see Ameka 1992a, Fraser 1999, Jespersen 1965, Schiffrin 1987, Wilkins 1992, and Zwicky 1985). In Qeqchi there are three exceptions to this characterization. First, uyaluy is what I will call a reduplicative interjection, being composed, through syllabic reduplication, from the interjection uy. Second, ay dios and ay dios atinyuwa are what I will call extended interjections, being composed, through lexical extension, from the interjection ay.And lastly, the interjection ay may undergo further derivation into a delocutionary verb (becoming ayaynak, to countersign or yell continually, often said of get behinds howling), which may then undergo normal verbal in? ection for grammatical categories such as tense, aspect, person, and number. Lastly, although it is not a criterional feature, many of these forms are phonologically or morphologically anomalous, having features which mark them as odd or unique relative to the standard lexical forms of a language.For example, unlike most Qeqchi words, in which stress falls on the last syllable (Stewart 1980), the interjection uyaluy has syllable-initial stress. Similarly, while reduplication is a common morphological process in Qeqchi (Stewart 1980), the reduplicative interjection uyaluy is derived through a bad morphological form. While many Qeqchi words involve a glottalized alveolar stop, the interjection t is also implosive.7 Whereas the Spanish loanword dios is usually phonetically assimilated in Qeqchi as tiox when used as a noun, in the interjection ay dios there is no devoicing of the initial agreeable of this noun (i.e. , /d/ does not become /t/) or palatization of its ? nal consonant (i. e. , /s/ does not become /x/). And the interjection sht differs from ordinary Qeqchi words in using /sh/, rather than a vowel, as a syllabic (see Bloom? eld 19841933121).In short, it is clear from the number of quali? cations that interjections, like most linguistic forms, are dif? cult to characterize with necessary and suf? cient conditions (see Taylor 1995, Zwicky 1985). Nevertheless, they may simultaneously be differentiated from other form classes within a particular language and generalized as a form class across languages.7. Often called a dental click (Wilkins 1992) or a suction stop (Jespersen 196590). Readers who speak some Spanish may have sight that many Qeqchi interjections look similar to Spanish interjectionsay (dios), uy, ah, eh, shtand even to incline interjections (sht and t). While I have no h istorical data that would attest to such a claim, given the history of sustained linguistic contact between speakers of Spanish and Qeqchi via the colonial encounter and between speakers of Spanish and English this should come as no surprise.The one good account of interjections in Spanish (Montes 1999) discusses only a small range of the discursive functions of interjections and focuses on the internal state of the speaker. As I will show, however, the meanings of some of these interjections in Qeqchi seem to bear a resemblance to their meanings in Spanish, as furthermost as can be discerned from the comparative degree data. In this way, these loan interjections show that most any linguistic form may be borrowed (see Brody 1995) with some maintenance of its meaning.The Meanings of Qeqchi InterjectionsAlthough interjections are relatively easy to characterize from the standpoint of grammatical form, there is no framework in terms of which one may order and compare their meanings that is, the classes of bearings and signs that they index (and thereby stand in a relationship of contiguity with) and the types of pragmatic functions they serve (and thereby may be used as a means to achieve). In what follows, I frame their use in terms of situational, discursive, and social context. I will begin with an extended example through which the framework will become clear.The Qeqchi interjection chix indexes severe objects in the situational context. For example, when picking up his wheel of food from the ground, a man notices that he has set it in chicken feces. Chix, he says, scraping the bowl on the mark to wipe off the feces. His wife, herself responsible for the chicken, then takes his bowl for herself and gives him a new one. Similarly, when interruption the door to her house early one morning, a woman notices that the dog has vomited right outside the doorway. Chix, she says, and her ? ve-year-old son comes over to look.She tells him to detrition it away with a machete. resembling most interjections that have indexical objects in the situational context, this interjection serves to call anothers prudence to the object. 8 Relatedly, and as a function of responsibility assessment (husband 1 wife 1 child), it directs anothers caution to what must be cleaned up, avoided, etc. The interjection chix may also be turn to index a sign denoting or characterizing a loathsome object (see Buhler 1990). In such cases of sign-based switching, ? the interjection is in a relationship of contiguity with a 8.Montes (19991293) notes that most of the Spanish interjections she examined seem to be associated with seeing. We ? nd that a large number of the interjections ah, oh, uh, ay, oy, uy used in the conversations examined co-occur with directives to see or look at or as a response to these directives. k o c k e l m a n The Meanings of Interjections in Qeqchi Maya F 471 sign that denotes or characterizes the object or typesetters case in questio n (rather than being in contiguity with the actual object or event, as in the usage of chix just discussed).In other words, it is as if the speaker were inhabiting the frame of the narrated event (Buhler 1990). In this way, ? the interjection chix indexes not just loathsomeness but also signs that refer to or predicate qualities of loathsome objects. until now as the denotatum of such a sign has the same qualities and values as the object itself, the modality of contiguity (being able to taste, touch, see, or smell the object in question) is hang up while the ontological class of the object (loathsomeness) is maintained.For example, in telling a story to a group ofmen about a champ who was bitten by a poisonous spider while working(a) on a plantation in the lowland area of Guatemala, the speaker describes the pus blisters that rose up on his friends arm. Chix, says one of the men listening.The other men laugh, and before continuing his story the speaker adds that the pus blist ers took two weeks to heal. Like most interjections that undergo signbased transposition, such usage often serves as a backchannel cue, indicating that the speaker is listening but cannot or does not want to contribute to the topic at hand (Brown and Yule 19839094 Duncan 1973 compare the usage of mmm or jeez in English).Lastly, the interjection chix may be transposed to index an addressees relation of contiguity with a loathsome object. In such cases of addressee-based transposition, the situational indexical object is transposed to a person other than the speaker. The speakers sign is audible (a relation of contiguity) to the addressee, who is in a relationship of contiguity with the object. In other words, it is as if the speaker were inhabiting the ad? dressees current corporal?eld (see Buhler 1990, Hanks 1990), and, again, the modality of contiguity is suspended while the ontological class is maintained.For example, a mother observation her three-year-old son approach a dog that is defecating wormy stool calls out to him Chix. The child stops his advance and watches from a distance. In this most addressee-focused way, the sign is used by a parent to index that a child is within reach (typically tactile) of a disgusting object and serves as an lordly not to touch the object.Interjections are generally indexical (see Peirce 1955) in that they stand for their objects by a relationship of contiguity rather than by a relationship of convention (as in the case of symbols) or similitude (as in the case of icons). 9 Although the indexical modality of interjections is emphasized in this article, the emblematic modality is always move over in at least two interrelated ways. First, and trivially, the interjection itself has a standard9. If interjections were iconic, then they would be expected to resemble their objects.The problem with this, as exempli?ed by Kryk-Kastovskys (1997) line of reasoning that interjections are the most iconic of all linguistic elem ents expressing surprise, is that one needs to know what surprise looks like when usually our only indication of surprise is the interjection or behavior itself. However, interjections as indexical of situational and discursive objects do in reliable cases have iconic modalities of meaning (see, e. g. , the discussion of ay, ay dios, and ay dios atinyuwa below). ized but relatively arbitrary form that is conventionally used by members of a given linguistic community.Second, interjections conventionally stand in a relation of contiguity with particular classes of objects. These conventional classes of indexical objects are present in two ways. First, across interjections, one may characterize what semiotic class of objects is being indexed. Second, in the case of any particular interjection, one may characterize what ontological class of objects is being indexed. too indexing objects or signs in the adjacent context, interjections have pragmatic functions they serve as a means to achieve certain ends.For example, chix variously serves as an attentative (when nontransposed), a back-channel cue (when undergoing sign-based transposition), and an imperative (when undergoing addressee-based transposition). Both the objects indexed and the pragmatic functions served (see Silverstein 1987) are integral aspects of the meanings of interjections. Finally, interjections may index more than one object at once. In particular, they may index objects, signs, internal states, and social relations. In what follows, I will refer to these distinct types of indexical objects as situational, discursive, expressive, and social, respectively.Situational indexical objects are the objects or events in the immediate context of the speech event. tangential indexical objects are the signs that occur in the speech event. 10 Together, situational and discursive indexical objects are the most stable coincidence regularities that interjections possess and therefore the only ones that ar e easy to tabulate. Expressive indexical objects are the intentional stances of the speakerthe acknowledged mental states, whether construed as cognitive or emotive.11 Lastly, social indexical objects are the various social roles inhabited by the speaker or addressee (gender, ethnicity, age, etc. ) or the social relations that exist between the two (status, deference, politeness, etc. ). For example, chix may index not only a loathsome object in the situational context but a social relation (parentchild, husband-wife, raconteurappreciative listener) and, in many cases, an internal state (disgust). And the interjection ay not only indexes a painful object in the situational context or an unexpected suffice in the dis10.This is not quite the standard distinction between text and context (Montes 1999 and Wilkins 1992). For example, while it is tempting to put sign-based transposition into the discursive context for the purposes of schematizing the data, sign-based transpositions make mavin only in terms of the qualities of the objects referred to by the sign indexed by the interjection. In contrast, an unrequested response such as a dubitive is directed at the truth of anothers assertion rather than at any particular quality of the state of affairs predicated by that assertion.For this reason, dubitives belong to the discursive context and sign-based transpositions to the situational context. 11. Whereas interjections creatively index expressive indexical objects in that the interjection is often the only sign of the internal state in question, they presupposedly index situational and discursive indexical objects in that both interjection and indexical object are simultaneously present in context (see Silverstein 1976 for this distinction).This difference in semiotic status (presupposing/creative) maps onto a putative difference in ontological status (world/mind). 472 F c u r r e n t a n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 44, Number 4, AugustOctober 2003 cursive conte xt but also an internal state (pain) in the expressive context and a role in the social context (in particular, female gender). Many interjections index signs in the discursive context in that they co-occur with (or serve as) a response to an addressees previous utterance or a nonresponse.In the case of a response, the use of an interjection occurs after and makes sense only relative to the addressees previous utterance. For example, the interjection ih indexes an addressees previous statement and serves as a registerative, indicating that the speaker has heard and understood the statement. In the case of a nonresponse, the interjection may either elicit an addressees utterance (and thereby occur before it) or occur in the midst of the speaker.