Attention-getting words and their functions in modern Chinese

Abstract

This paper describes one of the subcategories of interjections – attention-getting words in Modern Chinese and investigates the functions of these words. Compared with other subcategories of interjections, the attention-getting words are mainly used to get the hearer’s attention in order to initiate interpersonal conversation, to get the hearer’s attention on something, and to make the hearer do what the speaker wants him/her to do on purpose. According to the functions of the interjections, we classify the attention-getting words into three subcategories: greetings, demonstrative interjections and words of commands. Every subcategory shows different features and functions, we’ll describe these interjections respectively in details.