Open AccessØv – A Problem for Categorization
Author(s) -
Ehm Hjorth Miltersen
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
skandinaviske sprogstudier
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1904-7843
DOI - 10.7146/sss.v10i1.114670
Subject(s) - categorization , utterance , computer science , natural language processing , set (abstract data type) , linguistics , danish , word (group theory) , artificial intelligence , speech act , philosophy , programming language
The Danish word øv is traditionally categorized as an interjection. However, in a set of data primarily from chat conversations, several instances of øv do not match any traditional definition of interjections: It is syntactically integrated and thus does not constitute a full utterance on its own, and its semantic-pragmatic use is more nuanced than “expressing an aspect of the speaker’s mental state”. Th e main part of the article is a functionally-based analysis of these instances of øv, the insights from which are used to question the general practice of lexical categorization. I argue that a pragmatically based model of categorization is better able to account for the full range of uses for a word form.