Talk:Grammatical particle

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[edit] 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.


[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)


[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)