In linguistics, the term particle is often employed as a useful catch-all lacking a strict definition. A general requisite is that something has to be a word on its own to qualify as a particle. Depending on its context, the meaning of the term may overlap with such notions as morpheme, marker or even adverb (another catch-all term). Like many linguistic concepts, the precise content of the notion is very language-specific.

More strictly, grammatical particles are function words that are always uninflected, in that they neither adopt affixes, nor change their vowels or consonants, however much the rest of the words within the sentence are subject to normal inflection.

Contents

1 Particles as function words 2 Resume of the different types of particle in English 2.1 Articles, infinitival, prepositional and adverbial particles 2.2 Interjections, sentence connectors and conjunctions 3 Particles in Asian Languages

Particles as function words

Particles belong to the function word class because their function consists of defining the grammatical meaning in a sentence rather than the lexical meaning of each individual word that may be looked up in a dictionary.

The grammatical meaning defines what role the particle plays within the sentence as the article the, does; the infinitival to; the determiners more, most, less or least in comparisons; or indeed as many linguists insist, adverbs and prepositions, all especially so since they are uninflected. In this way the grammatical meaning lies in the keywords article, infinitive, determiner, etc.

Resume of the different types of particle in English

Articles, infinitival, prepositional and adverbial particles

• The definite article the (the indefinite article a or an cannot really be classed as uninflected as in the plural it is not used)
• the infinitive to, as in to walk
• adverbs, such as even as in even the youngest of them
• prepositions as in over as in I went over the hill; or as in phrasal verbs such as put off as in we put it off too long

Interjections, sentence connectors and conjunctions

Sentence connectors, tags or tag questions (also called sentence-finals) and conjunctions connect to what has been said in a previous clause or sentence. These three types of grammatical particles, however, similarly to modal particles in some other languages, also reflect the mood and attitude of the speaker to what has gone before in the conversation, or is likely to follow later, as after greetings, etc. Interjections, sentence connectors and conjunctions because of their similar functions, should be grouped together:

Interjections

• ah
• alas
• farewell
• goodbye
• hello
• hi
• h’m
• hum
• no
• oh
• ouch
• wow
• yes
• zzzzzzzzz (as in a cartoon for someone sleeping, one of the few non-vocal interjections)

The list of interjections is probably never-ending as it belongs to the open class word category and is subject to new creations at all times.

Sentence connectors

• so (as in So what)
• well (as in Well, we can’t help that)
• still (as in Still, it could have been a lot worse)
• yet {as in I am older now, yet I still enjoy some of the things I used to do)
• as
• also
• however
• nevertheless
• otherwise
• anyway
• then
• also
• too (as in that, too, has been said in the past}

Tags or tag questions (sentence-finals)

• "...didn't they?"; "...wasn't it?"; "...shouldn't it?", etc.

Conjunctions

• and
• nor
• but
• while (while it is true, that all line repairs are undertaken on Sundays, not all trains should be assumed to be late)
• although/though
• for (as in she could not see the film, for she was too young
• because
• unless
• since (as in since you asked, I will tell you)

Particles in Asian Languages

See also: Postposition

In both Japanese and Korean, particles are used to mark nouns according to their case or their role (subject, object, complement, or topic) in a sentence or clause. In Japanese and Korean, particles are considered as a distinct part of speech.