his chapter,several aspects will be explained. The author will offer a detailed introduction about theconcept of motivation which will be related to its appearance and development as well asabout the definition and the classification of interjections. Besides, some currentresearches about the cognitive motivation of English interjections will be concluded anddiscussed by the author.
2.1 Debate between arbitrariness and motivation
Since the ancient Greek, form and meaning are regarded as two indivisiblecomponents of human language. From the beginning of 20th Century, the terms of“signifier” and “signified” mentioned by De Saussure have greatly influenced thedevelopment of the modern linguistics. However, some linguists argued that Saussure’s“signifier” only referred to the sound form of certain language. It is known that the soundform can not be equal to the linguistic form (Wang, 2007: 506). Thus, the author prefers touse the words “form” and “meaning” as two basic components of human language.Clearly, both form and meaning constitute certain language. However, whether therelationship between form and meaning is arbitrary or not has long been controversial inthe academia. Evolving around the issue, there generally existed two viewpoints:“Naturalism” and “Conventionalism” (namely “Realism” and “Nominalism”) (Zhao, 2011:22). Scholars, such as Herakleitos, Socrates and Plato, held on the former point of view.They deemed that there existed a certain contact between form and meaning and certainmeanings could only be showed by certain forms. Scholars, such as Parmenides,Hermogenes and Aristoteles, stuck to the latter point of view. They thought that therelation between form and meaning was totally factitious and conventional (Li, 2004: 214).In ancient China, Historical Semantics is a subject of researching language, whichemphasizes on exploring the contact between form and meaning. Thus, since then, thestudy of language motivation has been the core of researching Chinese traditional texts.Domestic scholars indicate that the main idea of the study of Chinese traditional texts is tofind out the connection between form and meaning (Xu 1988/2009:1, cited in Zhao 2011:32).The controversy did not calm down until the mention of Saussure’s “arbitrariness oflinguistic signs” at the beginning of 20th Century. According to Saussure, the relationbetween form and meaning was arbitrary. More definitely, there was no relationshipbetween signifier and signified. The principle of arbitrariness seemed to sub side theprevious argument. However, both foreign and domestic scholars gradually found theunilateralism of Saussure’s opinions. Even Saussure himself realized his limitation and putforward the notion of the relative motivation. It was pointed out that some linguistic signswere absolutely arbitrary, but as was found among others, although the principle ofarbitrariness existed, the motivation of linguistic signs was to some extent playing a role(Saussure 1916/1980:13, cited in Zhao 2011: 41).
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2.2 Definition of lexical motivation
The expression of “Motivation” is mostly understood as a term of psychology. Thelinguistic notion of motivation is a little different from its psychological explanation.Motivation can be explained in both its general and narrow sense. Generally speaking,motivation refers to the basis of any linguistic phenomena’s emergence, development anddeath. The narrow sense of motivation focuses on the reasonable connection between theform and the meaning of words (Li, 2013: 60). With the development of the modernlinguistics, when the term of motivation comes into the lexical level, both foreign anddomestic scholars gave their self explanations of lexical motivation from differentperspectives.It is Ullmann who put forward the term “motivation” for the first time. Ullmanndivided
