the unquestioned authority of words printed in a book, and reproduced letter for letter with a most amusing accuracy. But when Horne Tooke fastens upon an unfortunate Italian grammarian and describes him as 'The industrious and exact Cinonio, who does not appear ever to have had a single glimpse of reason,' it is not easy to see what the pioneer of English philology could find to object to in Cinonio's obviously true assertion, that a single interjection, ah! or ahi! is capable of expressing more than twenty different emotions or intentions, such as pain, entreaty, threatening, sighing, disdain, according to the tone in which it is uttered.[1] The fact that interjections do thus utter feelings is quite beyond dispute, and the philologist's concern with them is on the one hand to study their action in expressing emotion, and on the other to trace their passage into more fully-formed words, such as have their place in connected syntax and form part of logical propositions.
In the first place, however, it is necessary to separate from proper interjections the many sense-words which, often kept up in a mutilated or old-fashioned guise, come so close to them both in appearance and in use. Among classic examples are φέρε! δεῦτε! age! macte! Such a word is hail! which as the Gothic Bible shows, was originally an adjective, 'whole, hale, prosperous,' used vocatively, just as the Italians cry bravo! brava! bravi! brave! When the African negro cries out in fear or wonder mámá! mámá![2] he might be thought to be uttering a real interjection, 'a word used to express some passion or emotion of the mind,' as Lindley Murray has it, but in fact he is simply calling, grown-up baby as he is, for his mother; and the very same
- ↑ Horne Tooke, 'Diversions of Purley,' 2nd ed. London, 1798, pt. i. pp. б0-3.
- ↑ R. F. Burton, 'Lake Regions of Central Africa,' vol. ii. p. 333; Livingstone, 'Missionary Tr. in S. Africa,' p. 298; 'Gr. of Mpongwe lang,' A. B. C. F. Missions, Rev. J. L. Wilson, p. 27. See Callaway, 'Zulu Tales,' vol. i. p. 59.
