expressives

Noun

expressive (plural expressives)

1. Any word or phrase that expresses (that the speaker, writer, or signer has) a certain attitude toward or information about the referent.
   • Consider the case of expressives, where no prior knowledge of the speaker’s attitudes are required to interpret the utterance. In (43) ["That jerk Alexa keeps making me look bad"], Steve does not need to know (and in fact has no prior knowledge of) anything relating to Siri’s attitudes towards...2017, Tammi Leann Stout, An investigation of projection and temporal reference in Kaqchikel (dissertation for the University of Texas at Austin)
2. (more narrowly) A word or phrase, belonging to a distinct word class or having distinct morphosyntactic properties, with semantic symbolism (for example, an onomatopoeia), variously considered either a synonym, a hypernym or a hyponym of ideophone.
   • Cross-linguistically 'expressives' are more commonly termed 'ideophones' [...] Expressives are often cited as a distinctive shared feature of the Austroasiatic language family (Diffloth and Zide 1992; Osada 1992 (Mundari); Svantesson 1983 (Kammu)). [...] I do not make a distinction between...2004, Nicole Kruspe, A Grammar of Semelai, →ISBN, page 396

   Synonyms:

   sound-symbolic

See all 5 meanings of expressive