Talk:particle

Missing grammar sense: morpheme?

Chambers 1908 has a grammar sense not covered by our existing entry: "a word that can only be used in composition, as wise in sidewise". Is that correct? Sounds more like a morpheme. Equinox ◑ 03:55, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Among other old dictionaries, neither Johnson nor Ogilvie nor Century has it, but The Encyclopaedic Dictionary does: "a word which is not varied by inflection, as a preposition, a conjunction; a word which cannot be used except in composition, as -ward, -ly." And I found some citations (Citations:particle) of "particle" being used to refer to those strings. But a general sense of particle (our sense 3?) also seems to cover them, so it's hard to know if the narrow definition is valid or not. - -sche (discuss) 04:58, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

...because e.g. Alan Strode Campbell Ross, The Essentials of English Grammar (1964), page 18, says "[...] thus smoothly is composed of the word smooth and the particle LY", but the very next sentence is "sometimes the difference of form is very great; thus AM and BE are forms of the particle IS", suggesting that it is using a broad catch-all sense of "particle", which also seems to be the case with the Wiseman citation I found. Hrmph. - -sche (discuss) 06:27, 27 December 2018 (UTC)