Grammatical Particle
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). It is a catch-all term for a heterogeneous set of words and terms that lack a precise lexical definition. It is mostly used for words that help to encode grammatical categories (such as negation, mood or case), or fillers or discourse markers that facilitate discourse such as well, ah, anyway, etc. Particles are uninflected. As examples, the English infinitive marker to and negator not are usually considered particles.
Read more about Grammatical Particle: Related Concepts, Other Languages
Famous quotes containing the words grammatical and/or particle:
“Figure him there, with his scrofulous diseases, with his great greedy heart, and unspeakable chaos of thoughts; stalking mournful as a stranger in this Earth; eagerly devouring what spiritual thing he could come at: school-languages and other merely grammatical stuff, if there were nothing better! The largest soul that was in all England.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
“Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.”
—Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910)