grammar In linguistics, grammar is the set of rules for how a natural language is structured, as demonstrated by its speakers or writers. Grammar rules may concern the use of clauses, phrases, and words. The term may also refer to the study of such rul ...

, the term ''particle'' (

abbreviated An abbreviation () is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method including shortening, contraction, initialism (which includes acronym), or crasis. An abbreviation may be a shortened form of a word, usually ended with a trailing per ...

) has a traditional meaning, as a

part of speech In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech ( abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are ...

that cannot be

inflected In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...

, and a modern meaning, as a

function word In linguistics, function words (also called functors) are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning and express grammatical relationships among other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speak ...

(functor) associated with another word or phrase in order to impart meaning. Although a particle may have an intrinsic meaning and may fit into other grammatical categories, the fundamental idea of the particle is to add context to the sentence, expressing a mood or indicating a specific action. In English, for example, the phrase "oh well" has no purpose in speech other than to convey a mood. The word "up" would be a particle in the phrase "look up" (as in "look up this topic"), implying that one researches something rather than that one literally gazes skywards. Many languages use particles in varying amounts and for varying reasons. In Hindi, they may be used as honorifics, or to indicate emphasis or negation. In some languages, they are clearly defined; for example, in Chinese, there are three types of (; ): ''structural'', ''aspectual'', and ''modal''. ''Structural'' particles are used for

grammatical relations In linguistics, grammatical relations (also called grammatical functions, grammatical roles, or syntactic functions) are functional relationships between constituents in a clause. The standard examples of grammatical functions from traditional g ...

. ''Aspectual'' particles signal

grammatical aspect In linguistics, aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how a verbal action, event, or state, extends over time. For instance, perfective aspect is used in referring to an event conceived as bounded and unitary, without reference t ...

s. ''Modal'' particles express

linguistic modality In linguistics and philosophy, modality refers to the ways language can express various relationships to reality or truth. For instance, a modal expression may convey that something is likely, desirable, or permissible. Quintessential modal ex ...

. However, Polynesian languages, which are almost devoid of inflection, use particles extensively to indicate mood, tense, and case.

Modern meaning

In modern grammar, a particle is a

that must be associated with another word or phrase to impart meaning, i.e., it does not have its own lexical definition. According to this definition, particles are a separate

and are distinct from other classes of function words, such as articles,

preposition Adpositions are a part of speech, class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in, under, towards, behind, ago'', etc.) or mark various thematic relations, semantic roles (''of, for''). The most common adpositions are prepositi ...

s, conjunctions and

adverbs An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, an adjective, another adverb, a determiner, a clause, a preposition, or a sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, or level of certainty by ans ...

. Languages vary widely in how much they use particles, some using them extensively and others more commonly using alternative devices such as prefixes/suffixes, inflection,

auxiliary verb An auxiliary verb ( abbreviated ) is a verb that adds functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it occurs, so as to express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc. Auxiliary verbs usually accompany an infinitive verb or ...

s and word order. Particles are typically words that encode grammatical categories (such as

negation In logic, negation, also called the logical not or logical complement, is an operation (mathematics), operation that takes a Proposition (mathematics), proposition P to another proposition "not P", written \neg P, \mathord P, P^\prime or \over ...

, mood, tense, or case),

clitic In morphology and syntax, a clitic ( , backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a ...

s, fillers or (oral) discourse markers such as ''well'', ''um'', etc. Particles are never

Afrikaans

Some commonly used particles in

Afrikaans Afrikaans is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language spoken in South Africa, Namibia and to a lesser extent Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and also Argentina where there is a group in Sarmiento, Chubut, Sarmiento that speaks the Pat ...

include: * ₂: Afrikaans has a double negation system, as in: :: The first ₁ is analysed as an adverb, while the second ₂ as a negation particle. * : Infinitive verbs are preceded by the complementiser and the infinitival particle , e.g. * or : Both and are

genitive In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can ...

particles, e.g. * and : These two particles are found in constructions like

Arabic

Particles in Arabic can take the form of a single root letter before a given word, like "" ('and'), "" ('so') and "" ('to'). However, other particles like "" (which marks a question) can be complete words as well.

Chinese

There are three types of (; particles) in Chinese: Structural, Aspectual, and Modal. Structural particles are used for

. Aspectual particles signal

s. Modal particles express

. Note that particles are different from (; modal verbs) in Chinese.

English

''Particle'' is a somewhat nebulous term for a variety of small words that do not conveniently fit into other classes of words. ''The Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language'' defines a particle as a "word that does not change its form through inflection and does not fit easily into the established system of parts of speech". The term includes the "adverbial particles" like ''up'' or ''out'' in verbal idioms (

phrasal verb In the traditional grammar of Modern English, a phrasal verb typically constitutes a single semantic unit consisting of a verb followed by a particle (e.g., ''turn down'', ''run into,'' or ''sit up''), sometimes collocated with a preposition (e. ...

s) such as "look up" or "knock out"; it also includes the "infinitival particle" ''to'', the "negative particle" ''not'', the "imperative particles" ''do'' and ''let'', and sometimes "pragmatic particles" (also called "fillers" or "discourse markers") like ''oh'' and ''well''.

German

German modal particle German modal particles ( or ''Abtönungspartikel'') are uninflected words that are used mainly in the spontaneous spoken language in colloquial Colloquialism (also called ''colloquial language'', ''colloquial speech'', ''everyday language'', or ...

serves no necessary syntactical function, but expresses the speaker's attitude towards the utterance. Modal particles include and others. Some of these also appear in non-particle forms. , for example, is also the conjunction ''but''. In , "He is American, but he speaks German well," is a conjunction connecting two sentences. But in , the is a particle, with the sentence perhaps best translated as "What good German he speaks!" These particles are common in speech but rarely found in written language, except that which has a spoken quality (such as online messaging).

Hindi

There are different types of particles present in

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

: emphatic particles, limiter particles, negation particles, affirmative particles, honorific particles, topic-marker particle and case-marking particles. Some common particles of Hindi are mentioned in the table below:

Japanese and Korean

The term ''particle'' is often used in descriptions of Japanese and Korean, where they are used to mark

noun In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, like living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an Object (grammar), object or Subject (grammar), subject within a p ...

s according to their

grammatical case A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and Numeral (linguistics), numerals) that corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a Nominal group (functional grammar), n ...

thematic relation In certain theories of linguistics, thematic relations, also known as semantic roles or thematic roles, are the various roles that a noun phrase may play with respect to the action or state described by a governing verb, commonly the sentence's m ...

in a sentence or clause. Linguistic analyses describe them as

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...

es,

s, or

postposition Adpositions are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in, under, towards, behind, ago'', etc.) or mark various semantic roles (''of, for''). The most common adpositions are prepositions (which precede their complemen ...

s. There are sentence-tagging particles such as Japanese question markers.

Polynesian languages

Polynesian languages are almost devoid of inflection, and use particles extensively to indicate mood, tense, and case. Suggs, discussing the deciphering of the rongorongo script of Easter Island, describes them as all-important. In Māori for example, the versatile particle can signal the

imperative mood The imperative mood is a grammatical mood that forms a command or request. The imperative mood is used to demand or require that an action be performed. It is usually found only in the present tense, second person. They are sometimes called ' ...

, the vocative case, the future tense, or the subject of a sentence formed with most passive verbs. The particle signals the past imperfect tense, the object of a transitive verb or the subject of a sentence formed with "neuter verbs" (a form of passive verb), as well as the prepositions ''in'', ''at'' and ''from''.

Tokelauan

Tokelauan Tokelauan () is a Polynesian language spoken in Tokelau and historically by the small population of Swains Island (or Olohega) in American Samoa. It is closely related to Tuvaluan language, Tuvaluan and is related to Samoan language, Samoan and ...

, is used when describing personal names, month names, and nouns used to describe a collaborative group of people participating in something together. It also can be used when a verb does not directly precede a pronoun to describe said pronouns. Its use for pronouns is optional but mostly in this way. cannot be used if the noun it is describing follows any of the prepositions , or . A couple of the other ways unrelated to what is listed above that is used is when preceding a locative or place name. However, if is being used in this fashion, the locative or place name must be the subject of the sentence. Another particle in Tokelauan is , or sometimes . This article is used before a person's name as well as the names of months and the particle is used before pronouns when these instances are following the prepositions or . is a particle used if following the preposition .

Russian

In Russian, particles sometimes play an important role making an additional nuance for a meaning of a phrase or of a whole sentence. One example is the particle , which imparts conditional mood (subjunctive) to a verb it is applied to or to a whole sentence. Other examples are and which are usually used to emphasise or accent other words. Generally there are lots of different particles in Russian of many kinds. Some of them are complex, consisting of other particles, others are as simple as one letter ().

Turkish

In some sources, exclamations and conjunctions are also considered Turkish particles. In this article, exclamations and conjunctions will not be dealt with, but only Turkish particles. The main particles used in Turkish are: * used with ('but'). * , another * , since * , one * , only * , regarding * , right * , not * , mention * , as much * , until * , due * , so * , before * , informal * , like * , by * , for * , withused with ('and') * , until * , against * , although or despite * , corresponding * , prior to * , due to * , beyond * , despite * , only * , as if * , then * , row * , to * , alone Particles can be used with the simple form of the names to which they are attached or in other cases. Some of particles uses with attached form, and some particles are always used after the relevant form. For examples, , , , : * ( is nominative) * (dative) * (ablative) Turkish particles according to their functions. used for 'other, another, otherwise, new, diverse, either'. * * used for 'by, in comparison, about, despite'. * * * used for 'for, with, because, because of, how'. * * *

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Grammatical Particle Parts of speech