Out now in Annual Review of Linguistics: Interjections at the Heart of Language. This review critically considers received views of interjections as involuntary grunts and provides a number of alternative ways of thinking about interjections. I would be very happy if you read it.
Interjections are, in Felix Ameka’s memorable formulation, “the universal yet neglected part of speech” (1992). They are rarely the subject of historical, typological or comparative research in linguistics, and they are notably underrepresented in descriptive grammars. As grammars are the main source of data for typologists, this is of course a perfect example of a self-reinforcing feedback loop. How can we break this trend?