Deborah Schiffrin OHAS A MARKER O F INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

I examine [a] discourse marker in this chapter – oh – whose uses are not clearly based on semantic meaning or grammatical status. . . . Oh is traditionally viewed as an exclamation or interjection. When used alone, without the syntactic support of a sentence, oh is said to indicate emotional states, e.g. surprise, fear, or pain (Oxford English Dictionary 1971, Fries 1952). (1) and (2) illustrate oh as exclamation:

(1) Jack: Was that a serious picture? Freda: Oh:! Gosh yes!