AH-CHOO!

[Thomas Paikeday]

Friends, Linguists, Grammarians,

I could spend some time poring over my Longman's COMPREHENSIVE GRAMMAR
(1985), but if anyone has an answer off the top of his head to the
question at the bottom, please help.

I just checked the OED disk (1988) and it has neither "ah-choo" nor
"achoo." "Ahem" is in, though, and occurs 18 times in the text; "humph"
11 times; "zzz," the last entry in the OXFORD CANADIAN/CONCISE OXFORD,
occurs a couple of times in the OED in the sawing and snoring senses.
There are 42 occurrences of "interj." in the OED text but none has the
sneeze as headword in any shape or form. "No sneezing please, we are
British?" And no "Gesundheit" (an OED entry) or "Bless you" either? When
I am in London next month, I hope to gather first-hand evidence on the
subject.

The main question for help from the List: If body language is
"nonverbal," as the Random House Dictionary and all the literature cited
by Michal Lisecki (Jan. 9) seem to say, does the sneeze (which is vocal,
with its vocal/verbal counterpart as "Ah-choo") qualify as body language
in some sense? If it does, I would like to use it as a checkpoint with
my informant group since sneezing exists in all cultures with only very
minor variations. A suppressed sneeze, I suppose, doesn't qualify as a
sneeze.

But I could benefit very much from your comments on the grammar side.

TOM PAIKEDAY (trying not to sound dumb)

Thomas Paikeday wrote:
. . . Is the part-of-speech called
> interj. verbal or nonverbal? (Please see RHD def. of BODY LANGUAGE). I appreciate
> it is vocal, as in "Ah-choo!" . . .
>