Particles within the scope of current grammatical research

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National University of Urban Economy in Kharkiv

Particles within the scope of current grammatical research

Minina N.S., PhD in Philology, Lecturer

Department of Foreign Languges

O.M. Beketov

Summary

particle grammatical word

The article represents an overview of the problem in classifying of particles and their grammatical nature which arose in the earlier and current linguistic studies. Such issues as categorical status of particles, the boundaries of this class of words belong to controversial areas of grammar research. The article deals with several theories of leading scholars in particology who have singled out some general features of particles despite the heterogeneity of this class of words.

Particles were first mentioned in the ancient grammars. Nevertheless, the discussions concerning the status of functional words continued until the middle of the twentieth century when the complexity and taxonomic ambiguity of these words was identified. In modern linguistics there is an increasing interest to studying particles, which can be explained by a number of factors. Among them there are the lack of their lexicographic description, as well as the interest expressed by the scholars in different areas of linguistics of the text and the theory of functional syntax.

In recent grammatical researches the problem of classifying parts of speech, defining of their functions and their intercategorial relations shows the number of questions not fully studied. The grammatical status of particles, their clear classification and definitions are among these controversial issues.

Analysis of recent research and publications. The problem of grammatical status of particles has been a focus of attention among leading scholars (F.S. Batsevich, E.K. Bezpoyasko, B. Cappelle, S.M. Kolesnikova, T.M. Nikolaeva, N.G. Ozerova, V.M. Rusanovskiy, N.Yu. Shvedova, E.M. Sidorenko, I.R. Vykhovanets, A.P. Zagnitko). A wide range of issues had been researched: the actualization functions of particles [3], the functioning of secondary particles [7], [3], the communicative functions of modal particles [8], classification, semantics and functioning of modal particles [14], peculiarities of particles as discoursive words [2], specific features of linguopoetic functioning of particles [9]. In their researches many linguists tend to oppose particles to other functional words. Another question to discuss is whether particles have their own meaning as the other parts of speech. Thus, the purpose of this article is to single out the main problems of the grammatical description of particles in the scope of linguistic studies of the twentieth century as well as in the current research.

Presentation of the main research material.

The problem of the morphological status of particles was outlined back in the works of A.M. Peshkovsky. The scientist classified these units as a special transitional class between morphemes, functional words and full words. The researcher suggested to identify them as a kind of “eliminative” words. Speaking about the classification of the functional parts of speech, A.M. Peshkovsky distinguished several types of particles: “intensifying functional units, negative functional units, imperative functional units” [16, p. 97].

V. Shcherba in his research emphasized on particular features of particles within the class of functional words. The scientist showed the difficulty of determining the grammatical status of functional words and particles among them. They were entitled as “amplifying words” [18, p. 81].

The approach presented in the scientific works by V. Vinogradov was considered to be the most traditional in the practice of grammatical description. In his research, the scientist showed the distinction and the opposition between full and functional parts of speech. He singled out the “parts of speech” and “particles of speech” (respectively, significant and functional parts of speech in the modern terminology). The particles were referred to “particles of speech”. Particles, according to V.V. Vinogradov, are classes of such words which usually do not have completely independent actual meaning, but mainly bring some additional shades of meanings to the other words, groups of words, sentences, or serve to express the various kinds of grammatical relations. Thus, the scientist created clear classification of particles, having distinguished the eight main groups (amplifying and restrictive; linking; definitive; demonstrative; indefinite; quantitative; negative; modal). The researcher spoke of the “deffusing” of the boundaries of particles as a word class [4, p. 546]. V.V. Vinogradov singled out modal particles as a separate group, specifying that some of them “represent a transitional type between modal words, adverbs and amplifying and restrictive particles” [4, p. 599]. The scientist noted that modal particles are often homogeneous in their functions with lexically full modal words and syntagmas. Paying attention to the problem of typology of particles and their position in the language system, V.V. Vinogradov, presented the pioneering idea of definig them as a separate part of speech, developed their detailed classification, and brought the issue of the transitional position of particles.

The development of the theory of discourse and communication in linguistics have brought the study of particles to a fundamentally new level. There appeared a separate direction connected with the study of the functioning of functional words called particology (the term first mentioned by T.M. Nikolaeva) [12, p. 24]. Particology deals with the detailed research of the functioning of particles in the colloquial speech. It was developed by T.M. Nikolaeva, who had devoted a number of articles and two of her monographs to this problem [10; 11]. The scientist pointed out the possibility of qualifying particles as a special functional class. At the same time, special attention was paid to the description of special features of particles: amplification, expressiveness, accentuation, modality, the ability of particles to act as rematizers. T.M. Nikolaeva also singled out the “duplicity” of particles, which, in her opinion, was connected with their ability to form a hidden, “shadow” utterance, that in various ways correlated with the original” [11, p. 55]. The transitional position of the particles as a functional class was also considered by the scientist. The author had emphasized the possibility of contextual situations when particles draw closer to conjunctions or to pronouns.

In modern academic grammars of the Ukrainian language, particles are often viewed as a separate and special type of functional words - morphemes, which can express two communicative functions - theme and rheme and form communicative types of sentence according to the purpose of the statement [5, p. 358]. Particles in this case are characterized as a way to form the communicative types of the sentence. Researchers define particles as morphemes of syntactic type, since they have no their own lexical meaning which is similar to synthetic morphemes.

These conclusions are opposed to the point of view that particles do have semantics as they, like any other word or morpheme, are meaningful, have an identifying nature, which distinguishes them from other elements of the same type. However, such a meaning is interpreted as “grammatical”, “contextually determinative”, having “functional character” in relation to the language unit which is defined by a particle (utterance, text) [15, p. 105]. The point of view that particles are not devoid of the semantic nature was previously mentioned in the works of T.M. Nikolaeva and E.K. Bezpoyasko. In particular, T.M. Nikolaeva notes that “the deffusing” of their semantics is due to their two properties: the fact that they have common invariant value and the scalability of their semantics in the text, which makes it difficult to talk about their polysemy, not only about homonymy [12, p. 60]. The scientist offers the functional approach to the study of these units, their comprehensive analysis. The diffusiveness of the particles as word class generates their mutual synonymy. It makes scientists to describe semantics of particles as the most weakened one. In other works, the features of particles are associated with the syntactic relations that they express in sentences [19, p. 60].

In scientific articles devoted to the study of particles, on the one hand, the presence of “identifying” and “differential” semes in particles is emphasized [14, p. 5], and on the other hand, it is stated that the particles have no denotative meaning and, accordingly, the do not possess nominative functions.

The issue on the ability of particles to have semantic meaning is partially solved within the framework of the theory of communication [1; 2]. Analyzing and describing presuppositions, F.S. Batsevich points out that the communicative meanings of particles are diffused, in most cases are not centered, it is reasonable to recognize them not as separate lexico-semantic variants, but as outlines of a communicative meaning. The scientist also notes that the communicative meanings that are brought into the text by particles are not individual, unique, occasional, but common, they are only semantically and pragmatically actualized under the influence of the specific context of their use [2, p. 249]. It was confirmed by the author that the component of presupposition associated with the cognitive space of the author and the recipient, as well as the characteristics of the external form directly affected the processes of understanding.

During the recent years, particles have been defined as the nonverbal item of certain complex verbs in Germanic languages [22, p. 14]. “The Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language” defines a particle as a “word that does not change its form through inflection and does not fit easily into the established system of parts of speech” [22]. Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald in her research “The Art of Grammar: A Practical Guide” points out that word particle may refer to any class of words which have no special morphological categories; but these can be very different in terms of their syntactic behavior [20, p. 202]. On the other hand, Bert Cappelle notes that “particles do form a distinct category”, although they “have long been a nuisance” [21, p. 100]. The scientist expressed the opinion that particles should throw off their image as “accessories to the verb”. They are extremely powerful elements, semantically and syntactically overshadowing the verb [21, p. 461].

Despite the variety of views on issues related to the study of particles, their main features were defined. For example, it has been established that the semantic structure of particles includes the following features: restriction, accentuation, amplification, clarification. They differ from other parts of speech which have their meaning and syntactic function. The semantics of particles is determined by a specific communicative situation. In recent scientific papers, particles are usually defined as “formally unchangeable units of language, which have the function of transmitting various communicative meanings of statements, speech genres, discourses (texts)” [2, p. 31]. According to A.A. Zagnitko, the special status of particles is motivated by the fact that they do not connect sentence members or predicative parts (like prepositions, conjunctions), but express different logical and grammatical meanings in the sentence as a whole [6, p. 110]. In grammar, the status of particles is still uncertain: they are called “hybrid class”, located “between modal words and adverbs, on the one hand, and conjunctions, on the other” [13, p.47].

Conclusion. The review of research papers dealing with the grammatical status of particles showed that this problem has not finally been solved. Researchers speak about the absence of the unified approach to the study of particles and confirm that there is no unanimous theoretical or methodological basis for studying particles. V.A. Plungyan, who refers particles to the other discourse words, notes that these words appeared to be the least researched area of the language. The researcher calls these words as the “quintessence of the language use” [17]. Summing up, we emphasize once again that the problem of the status of particles is not solved. Agreeing with the researchers, we note that the reason of the insufficient study of these words is that the study of such words requires much from the researcher: in order to study functional words, it is necessary to possess complex knowledge about the language (including grammar, semantics, vocabulary, pragmatics). The study opens the perspectives for further researches of particles and their equivalents.

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