interjections & other sentence words – English Grammar Profiler

We generally understand that interjections express sudden feelings and emotions such as pleasure, anger, disappointment, shock, surprise, and excitement. Formally, these words often proceed with punctuation marks, which are most often but not always exclamation points, and they are often ‘thrown’ in between sentences.  However, exact definitions are not so precise once we look at tags in corpora.

A search in the NOW corpus for the frequency of interjections:

_UH

1 YES 1588669
2 NO 1236715

Although sometimes classified as interjections, these words (YES NO) do not (always) express emotion or act as calls for attention; they are not adverbs because they do not qualify any verb, adjective, or adverb. They are sometimes classified as a part of speech in their own right: sentence words or word sentences.

en.wikipedia.org

The most common collocate of ‘yes’ is ‘yes’.  Here is an example that clearly expresses emotion:

I knew you would.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!
Yes! Oh.

listen

*Note that there is no entry in the English Profile or Collins dictionary for ‘yes’ used to express emotion which suggests this is not an A1 cando.  ‘Yeah’ is listed at A2 as an exclamation.

‘No’ as an exclamation is listed in the Collins dictionary at A2.

express shock or disappointment at something you have just been told.

For example:

No God, Please No! Noooooooo!

3 OH 660760

Oh my God, I can’t believe it!

listen

4 YEAH 490314
5 HEY 251322 more repetition:

Hey, hey, hey.
Hey!
Hey, hey, hey, hey!
Whoa! What? … Mind telling me what the hell is wrong with you?

6 HI 198411 7 HELLO 164454 8 WOW 160706 9 AR 93860 10 AH 83664 11 HA 82685 12 UM 67610 13 OOPS 57839 14 UH 57485 15 ALAS 53637 16 GOODBYE 50779 17 YEP 47492 18 DEAR 43188 19 O 39962 20 NOPE 35945 21 COR 35245 22 EY 35112 23 TA 35055 24 EH 32694 25 YO 31715 26 MM 30395 27 LO 29373 28 CHEERS 28898 29 SH 28751 30 BLAH 28279 31 GEE 27514 32 GOSH 27428 33 OOH 27347 34 TT 27285 35 NA 26683 36 BYE 24709 37 HUH 24044 38 OCH 22803 39 EE 22052 40 HO 21957 41 EUREKA 21304 42 NAH 21136 43 HMM 20346 44 AMEN 20311 45 BRAVO 20191 46 YA 19873 47 OLE 18334 48 YUM 17999 49 AHA 15993 50 AY 15171 51 WHOA 15034 52 YUP 13808 53 DAMN 13553 54 AW 13420 55 MMM 13138 56 OUCH 12546 57 YEA 12438 58 HAHA 11839 59 UGH 11797 60 POW 11682 61 BOO 11679 62 AYE 11306 63 AHEM 11081 64 OI 9946 65 HOY 9401 66 CRIKEY 8964 67 LEAH 8888 68 OO 8801 69 UMM 8756 70 NAY 8098 71 BEHOLD 7824 72 AND 7813 73 BAH 7607 74 PRESTO 7584 75 U-M 7501 76 TUT 7460 77 WHAM 7120 78 POP 6885 79 FAREWELL 6221 80 PHEW 6203 81 QUALCOMM 6138 82 WOH 5910 83 AHH 5369 84 WHOOP 5313 85 SHOO-IN 5065 86 GEES 5010 87 GOODNIGHT 4994 88 HALLELUJAH 4814 89 HOORAY 4788 90 ACH 4637 91 AWW 4615 92 OY 4409 93 OPRAH 4353 94 DAMMIT 4231 95 SABAH 3985 96 ZZ 3951 97 MHM 3896 98 OOO 3833 99 REBEKAH 3715

100 HOI 3678