Talk:Grammatical particle

Layman's Terms, Please

I have a minor complaint in that the definition for grammatical particle is steeped in technical jargon and is difficult to understand without a background in linguistics. To further complicate the matter, while trying to understand it by context, almost all of the related words and their articles are also written at a higher level of understanding. While the technical prowess of the authors is certainly impressive, it does little to help me, a layman, understand it. Were I able to understand the definitions provided, I probably wouldn't have needed to look the term up in the first place. To know a complex subject thoroughly is admirable, but the ability to introduce a complex subject in a way that a simple person can understand it is, to many, the highest form of understanding.

Is this article speculative and not academic?

Why is the tone of this article speculative and not academic? It reads like its main authors didn't have much of a formal background in linguistics.--69.226.232.133 17:44, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, here is your chance to put that right, and change it into an article more positive and more academically authentic and supply the "formal background in liguistics" you are missing. No time like the present, as they say. We are all Wikipedians. Dieter Simon 00:08, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I'm responsible for a recent rewrite of the first paragraph and I did write that with my formal background in linguistics in mind. My two cents would be that there is no rigid formal linguistic definition of the term 'grammatical particle'. And I fully concur with Dieter Simon — if you know ways to improve the article, by all means do it! — mark ✎ 07:55, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Old discussion

How can I reduce the width of this article to make it more readable? Can anyone advise me on this? Dieter

The problem stemmed from some lines which had spaces at the start - such lines are rendered in a fixed font and don't break when they get to the edge of the screen. If you want to indent text without a bullet point, you can use a colon : at the start of the line, just as I have with this response. If you want to indent it with a bullet point, begin the line with a * as in the article. I've edited the article, so it should look better now. Hope this helps. --Camembert

Yes, many thanks, very useful. Sorry, it took me a while to get back to this.

--Dieter

Hi Dieter. Great work here. just wanted to ask about

It is isolated in relation to other words in the sentence, but may reflect the attitude or even the mood of the speaker or the narrator of the text on the one hand and on the other may act as a sentence connector to the previous sentence or clause.

Can we get a couple of examples there? --dgd

Sorry, dgd, have been away for a few days. Hope this helps, I know it has given me a bit of a problem answering your query

--User:Dieter Simon

---

Tag questions don't have to go at the end of a sentence: "It's hard to understand grammar, isn't it?" or "It's hard, isn't it?, to understand grammar." They just have to go after the verb they echo and negate (at least I can't think of a counter-example). Jacquerie27 18:07 May 4, 2003 (UTC)

Tag questions in the middle of a sentence? Are you serious?

Yes, perfectly serious. Jacquerie27 10:05 May 10, 2003 (UTC)

Surely, a tag question (or question tag) is "tagged on", that's the whole point of it, it is not "middled in".

But it's tagged on the main verb, not necessarily on the sentence as a whole. Jacquerie27 10:05 May 10, 2003 (UTC)

Apart from the faint mickey-taking, "it's hard, isn't it?, to understand grammar," it makes for some curious reading.

It isn't a literary form: it's colloquial or conversational English. Tag questions are much less common in formal writing. You could look in entire books of non-fiction and not find one. Jacquerie27 10:05 May 10, 2003 (UTC)

Are you talking here as logician, psychologist or linguist/grammarian? Of course, logically it is possible to put it into the middle of a sentence. It is also possible that a child, anxiously blubbering, "won't he ?, he will come", or "isn't it?, it is mine", can put the tag at the beginning.

Actually, that's a good example, because that is possible in English too, but it's not grammatically correct like "It's hard, isn't it?, to understand grammar", which is a perfectly good sentence in colloquial English. Jacquerie27 10:05 May 10, 2003 (UTC)

And of course, from a psychological point of view, a speaker may tumble over himself/herself anxiously, putting the tag in wherever he/she feels like in the heat of some terrified moment. But in normal practice?

Yes, in normal practice. Jacquerie27 10:05 May 10, 2003 (UTC)

Hardly. The fact that it may illustrate a particular psychological situation in fiction is all very well, but serious discourse it isn't. I am sorry, but we are trying to enlighten the reader in an encyclopedia about a grammatical construction and not about anything else. Otherwise it should go under the heading "fiction".

No, it honestly is good colloquial English. Isn't it possible in German too? (You'll have to excuse any mistakes I make.) "Nicht wahr" is a tag question in German, e.g. "Das ist Berlin, die Hauptstadt, nicht wahr?". But is this possible too?: "Das ist Berlin, nicht wahr?, die Hauptstadt." Jacquerie27 10:05 May 10, 2003 (UTC)

Sorry I was logged out once again. It's called bathos. --Dieter Simon 21:57 May 9, 2003 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that "It's hard, isn't it? to understand grammar" is logically possible as it has all the semblance of an ongoing conversation that might as well have been written in this way: "It's hard, isn't it? To understand grammar, to know the finer points, to..., etc." As it is, speech is dependent on situations, any sentence within speech might be compiled and still pass muster because that is what speech does. It conveys that which runs through the speaker's mind in however a haphazard fashion, logically possible and valid colloquially, but grammatically not always easily comprehensible.

However, our discussion arose in the course of putting the final touches on the article on 'Grammatical particle', in that we were trying to explain what a tag question is, in fact part of this article. Just how long would this article have to be if we were to include all the permutations of possible positions of the tag in all kinds of sentences? Especially, since normally encyclopedias always show the tag question at the end of the sentence, would it not be more confusing? After all, we are meant to clarify, not to make it more complicated.

As for the German sentence, yes, it has all the elements necessary, but unlike English where equivalent sentences are possible, such an example would be so much more unacceptable stylistically because in German the rules and norms of grammar are much more strictly applied. One has to bear in mind that German, though a beautiful language in certain ways, is much less able to absorb trends than English does, because of German's slightly more sclerotic constitution. --Dieter Simon 23:30 May 10, 2003 (UTC)

---

This whole article, while a very complete survey of particles in English, seems resultantly a bit English-centic. Maybe someone who has more than a passing knowledge of Chinese, Japanese and/or various Analytic languages' grammar could put in some description of the functions of particles in those languages, because, as I understand it, they play a much more central role in the grammar of the language than particles do in English, and don't already fit into grammatical categories like 'preposition' or 'adverb'. Maybe even this article could be renamed "Grammatical particles in English" and a more language-universal article could replace it.

Nohat 04:36 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)

External links

Why are there so many external links in this article that are not in an ==External links== section?? 66.245.74.65 00:38, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, I am not with you, external links? Can you point any out to me? Afaik there are no external links, there are only headers subdividing each separate itemised para which actually refers to subjects appertaining to the article itself. External links refer to websites outside Wikipedia. (;-) Dieter Simon 01:02, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

If you want to see some examples have a look at the bottom of Air raid shelter where there quite a number of external links. Dieter Simon

All but 3 of the links in the "Resume of the different types of particles" are external. 66.32.255.51 01:08, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Are we talking at cross-purposes here? You are saying "all but 3 of the links in the 'Resume of...' are external". I really can't see what you mean. All the blue links are either referring to articles of that name already in existence in Wikipedia, or to articles in Wiktionary, a sister dictionary to our own Wikipedia. You can see all this if you click on Wikimedia, both belong to the Wikimedia Foundation. The blue links are not external links, they are equivalent to 'See also' references at the bottom of our own articles. I really can't say more, perhaps someone should point me to the right place if I'm missing something here? Dieter Simon 14:01, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Particles in Asian Languages

Since you know so much more than I do about particles in Asian languages, I invite you to write a really great addition to this part of the article. As you may see this was not written by myself, so I can't comment on what was written. Good luck, it does look it needs some elaboration. Dieter Simon 22:59, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sentence connectors

Aren't many of the sentence connectors listed adverbs or conjunctions? As I understand grammar, many of them have the syntactic role of these parts of speech. Rintrah 16:38, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

You are right, of course. Sentence connectors are the more linguistic terms for conjunctions, etc. You could say the grammatic term is "conjunction", while the linguistic term "sentence connector" is that as well as other uninflected parts of syntax. Sentence connectors always refer to part of what has already been said prior to the latter clause referring to it. They therefore connect one clause with another within one sentence or they make a reference to previous sentences. They provide a background to what is said, put into context, or draw parallels.

Sentence connectors such as 'unless', 'but', 'however', 'only even', 'even though' or 'otherwise', or 'cause or effect' sentence connectors such 'because', 'therefore' or 'thus', are examples. Sentence connectors of 'addition' include 'as well as', 'too' 'also' 'and', 'etc'. There are many many more.

Another thing to remember is that they are uninflected, they do not change by having vowel changes, or by having prefixes, suffixes, in fact, no affixes whatsoever added. It might be worth your while to take a look at the separate article uninflected word.

Sentence connectors thus help to give style to what is being said or written and so allow a smooth continuous speech. The thing to remember is that sentence connectors help express complex ideas and relationships in a nice fluid way, leading easily from one sentence to another. Dieter Simon 22:56, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. Your explanation is helpful. Rintrah 11:32, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

From the above response I am led to understand that a conjunction is just another word for a (subset of?) sentence connector. So why are there separate lists of conjunctions and sentence connectors in the Wikipedia article? As a reader who has no linguistic background but is trying to make sense of (for example) whether to file 'but' in a different category to 'yet' (the current article suggests I should), I wonder if someone could provide a clarification, either by adding a description of what distinguishes sentence connectors from conjunctions (thus requiring two separate lists) or why they are two terms for the same thing (and subsequently amalgamating the two lists). Many thanks. Orthabok (talk) 22:43, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Phrasal verbs/verb phrases?

Firstly, sorry for disturbing any wiki-etiquette, never used the site. Verb phrases are mentioned as particles, but the entire phrase is mentioned as a particle (not just the preposition), earlier however the definition is stated as a word (or phrase) that cannot be inflected. However, I can easily say "put off" or "stop putting off your chores and do them" there, it's been inflected.

Have I misunderstood? Or perhaps you were referring to the phrase when used as a noun. e.g. "They were finally given the go ahead to start the project." (that, can't be inflected)

And someone made reference to particles in Asian languages? I speak Mandarin and some Japanese and could give a thorough explanation of their functions...should I? --124.78.83.152 19:02, 30 August 2007 (UTC)weiming

I think there may be a misunderstanding as to the definition of grammatical particle and that of phrasal verb. It is the grammatical particle (or particle for short) as a function word which is the uninflected word, not the phrasal verb. The phrasal verb does indeed consist of inflected, as well as uninflected parts. So every time a word which cannot have its form changed, have affixes added, or is inflected in any way that is the particle, such as "to", "the", "over", and the many others cited in the article 'grammatical particle'. However, a 'phrasal verb' does indeed consist of a verb, a preposition, an adverb, etc. and it is the verb which may be inflected but not the prepositions and the adverbs (not those ending in -ly) which are uninflected. The inclusion of 'verb phrase' as an alternative term for 'phrasal verb' is indeed misleading, and I shall take it out because it cannot be understood in this context. So, yes, you are right, it is misleading. Dieter Simon 23:12, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Writing a new article for "sentence connector"

We have a red link for "sentence connector", so I shall be writing a new article for this as there isn't one in Wikipedia. The term definitely exists out there, and there are a number of sources for it on the Internet. Dieter Simon (talk) 23:08, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I took "zzz" off the list of interjections...

...because it's not a word. It's a noncommunicative sound. If snoring is language then by the same logic the sound of chewing, breathing, etc. would also have to be considered language. Westknife (talk) 07:02, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Snoring is a noncommunicative sound. Zzz is an English word that conventionally represents this sound, and I suppose it would have to be classified as an interjection. But I don't care if it's on or off the list. As long as we replace it with brrrr… CapnPrep (talk) 15:50, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, we don't seem to have. Anyway, what's the difference? Is it anti-zzz and pro-brrrr week? Dieter Simon (talk) 00:42, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Corrected Thai Particles link

If the bot takes it out, please can someone with more privilege correct it. The old Geocities link is dead and the page has moved to http://siamsmile.webs.com/thaiparticles/thaiparticles.html. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Blutey (talk • contribs) 21:38, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Definition of Particle

The article begins with "a function word that is not assignable to any of the traditional grammatical word classes (such as pronouns, articles or conjunctions". However, in 3.2.4, a conjunction is given under the heading "3. Different types of particle". How can a particle not be connected with a conjunction but a conjunction can be connected with a particle? There's a contradiction here. Jonwoss00 (talk) 19:07, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

You are completely right. The article at present makes no sense at all. The section "Different types of particles in English" lists articles, prespositions, adverbs, interjections and conjunctions, all of which are exactly the traditional word classes that "particles" are said not to be. 86.174.47.33 (talk) 21:21, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

The problem was, some of the definitions could have been expressed slightly less convoluted. The main thing to be considered is that a particle is uninflected. Really, any word that cannot be inflected is a particle, while words that are inflected usually have a meaning which is independent of the sentence (or context) within which they appear. House (inflected) has a meaning generally understood even on its own, whereas and (uninflected) as a conjunction without a context cannot be understood and is purely part of a sentence to reflect that something has been said prior to it and that it is adding something within the sentence. And therefore is a participle.

Hope this helps. Dieter Simon (talk) 23:16, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi there! Thanks, it seems to make a bit more sense now. I have a couple more quibbles:

In grammar, a particle is a function word that does not belong to any of the inflected grammatical word classes (such as nouns, pronouns, verbs, or articles.

Since the article "the" is mentioned later as an example of a particle, I wonder if it might be less confusing to delete "articles" from this "such as" list.

In English, the infinitive marker to and the negator not are examples of words that are usually regarded as particles.

To me, with my modicum of knowledge of the simple, traditional parts of speech, the choice of these two examples gives the strong impression that particles are words unclassifiable according to that traditional scheme. It does not give any hint that the category might include the plethora of adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections and sentence connectors that are listed later. Can we give a more representative set of examples up front? 86.174.161.247 (talk) 01:14, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

It is not really as difficult as you might think. A particle is any word that can neither add a suffix, such as -s, -es, -ed, -er, or -est, nor is an irregular type of verb such a buy/bought, take/taken. All these are inflected examples, therefore are not particles. As for your query about prepositions, conjunctions, etc., just think whether they can change or not or whether something can be added to them. You will find none of these categories can change. To, on, whether, no, yes, about, hi, and, etc., all of these belong to one or the other of the categories you and the article mention, and are uninflected and particles. The article the cannot change and is therefore uninflected and a particle. As to the phrasal verb type of adverb up as in give up or under as in go under, they are the adverbs that do not inflect and so are also particles. However, -ly adverbs may inflect to -ier or -iest, and should not be counted among the particles.

Don't let the categories throw you, just think: can this word be inflected or not. That is your main consideration. Dieter Simon (talk) 22:38, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your advice, but my purpose in commenting was really to improve the article, not have you provide supplememntary explanations on the talk page. I still think (and correct me if I'm wrong) that the mention of articles in the "such as" list in the lead section is confusing and contradictory, and that the examples "not" and infinitive "to" are misleading in the narowness of their scope. 86.173.171.67 (talk) 00:47, 25 May 2010 (UTC).

I agree with much of the above re the inconsistencies in the article, and have tried to fix it. See my talk below Chrismorey (talk) 23:05, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

All I can say is that I can't help you any further. There is no further thing I can say. If you can lay your hands on the "Oxford Comapanion to the English Language" as cited, please do so. It will substantiate my points. Dieter Simon (talk) 22:01, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I am not seeking substantiation of your points. I am requesting improvement of the article in those areas that I have highlighted. 86.135.25.222 (talk) 21:54, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Confusing?

You bet. If GPs are a word class or part of speech, which seems clear to me, only words that do not fall into other classes can be particles. All particles are uninflectable (this seems not to be contentious), but it does not seem logical to say that all uninflectable words are particles, since they usually have perfectly good functions, e.g. conjunctions, prepositions. This is true of nearly all the examples given previously, which I've axed BTW.

However if GPs are merely non-inflecting words (i.e. the definition is based on grammatical behaviour not lexical function), a word could be both a particle and an adverb, preposition, conjunction etc. This seems counter-intuitive and IMO serves no obvious purpose.

Anyway I've tried to make the article internally consistent and indicate where there is ambiguity. NB I don't regard the German website cited by a previous editor as the best authority for English grammar. I don't propose to engage in dispute, which seems to me fruitless. Language is after all about communication. The article needs an expert and I've so tagged it.

The reference to "function words" was removed since the definition of function words conflicts with that of particles. The following reference was removed, but is put here in case anyone wants to reinstate it: http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/fun/welsh/Glossary_main.html Interjections

IMO the best candidate for a particle in modern spoken English is like as in the ubiquitous 'He was like, "Oh my God!" ' Chrismorey (talk) 06:45, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Meaning

"In Latin, particles are the adverb, the preposition, the conjunction and the interjection (a word that has emotion"

What is the meaning of this sentence? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.91.51.235 (talk) 13:24, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, that's not very clearly worded, and "a word that has emotion" is just nonsense. I'll have a go at rewording it, though I'll have not objections if someone removes the whole section altogether. – Uanfala (talk) 20:23, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Well, I've removed it all: there's no point in merely mentioning that in language X such-and-such word classes are particles, unless there's some actual examples of e.g. how they're delimited. – Uanfala (talk) 20:28, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Weird

Why the abbreviation is ptcl in small capitals font, and not PTCL. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.91.51.235 (talk) 13:25, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Glossing abbreviations are normally formatted in small caps. And as to why small caps are formatted the way they are, you can ask at Template talk:Smallcaps. – Uanfala (talk) 20:30, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

English

What is a grammatical signals? 103.91.143.180 (talk) 12:23, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for noticing, IP reader. It has been corrected.--FeralOink (talk) 10:18, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

English not subordinate to other languages; Original research is redundant

I am going to change the subheadings in the article. It doesn't make sense to have English as a major heading, then various other languages (which actually seem to use particles more than English does!) be subordinate/lower level headings.

I am going to remove the content contained in the WP:OR tagged subheading and copy it here, for the following reasons:

1. It has been tagged original research since March 2017, without any remedial efforts in the intervening SIX (6) years;
2. It is redundant, i.e. it repeats content that is already in the lead and other parts of the article, specifically, examples in the English language.
3. Although it is the second sub-heading to appear in the article, it references examples in the English language only. Yet the single source provided as a reference is about the German language. (That source is a parked domain although it has been archived).

If anyone wants to re-insert this content, it will be available. FeralOink (talk) 10:17, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Removed WP:OR content section

Related concepts and ambiguities

Depending on context, the meaning of the term may overlap with concepts such as morpheme, marker, or even adverb as in English phrasal verbs such as out in get out. Under a strict definition, in which a particle must be uninflected, English deictics like this and that would not be classed as such (since they have plurals and are therefore inflected), and neither would Romance articles, since they are inflected for number and gender.

This assumes that any function word incapable of inflection is by definition a particle. However, this conflicts with the above statement that particles have no specific lexical function per se, since non-inflecting words that function as articles, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections have a clear lexical function. This disappears if particles are taken to be a separate class of words, where one characteristic (which they share with some words of other classes) is that they do not inflect.

References