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)
“Standing on the bare ground,—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part and particle of God.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)