Particle

Particle is a general term for a type words that are not major parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives) and are not inflected.

Comments

• "In nearly all grammars adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections are treated bas four distinct "parts of speech," the difference between them being thus put on a par with that between substantives, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs. But in this way the dissimilarities between these words are grossly exaggerated, and their evident similarities correspondingly obscured, and I therefore propose to revert to the old terminology by which these four classes are treated as one called "particles." " (Jespersen 1924:87)

References

• Jespersen, Otto. 1924. The philosophy of grammar. London: Allen & Unwin.
• Zwicky, Arnold M. 1985. "Clitics and particles." Language 61:283-305.