Sentence-final particle

Last updated November 14, 2022

Sentence-final particles, including modal particles,^[1] interactional particles,^[2] etc., are minimal lexemes (words) that occur at the end of a sentence and that do not carry referential meaning, but may relate to linguistic modality, register or other pragmatic effects. Sentence-final particles are common in Chinese, including particles such as Mandarin le 了, ne 呢, ba 吧, ou 哦, a 啊, la 啦, ya 呀, and ma 嗎/吗, and Cantonese lo 囉 and ge 嘅. These particles act as qualifiers of the clause or sentence they end. Sentence-final particles are also present in Japanese ^[3] and many East Asian languages, such as Thai, and especially in languages that have undergone heavy Sino-Tibetan influence, such as the Monguor languages.

Examples

Chinese

Yuen Ren Chao has described sentence-final particles as "phrase suffixes": just as a word suffix is in construction with the word preceding it, a sentence-final particle or phrase suffix is "in construction with a preceding phrase or sentence, though phonetically closely attached to the syllable immediately preceding it".^[4] According to Chao, the sentence-final particle is phonetically close to the last word before it, but syntactically it is equidistant from every word in the whole predicate.

While sentence-final particles usually do not carry meaning themselves or denote anything explicit, they may be derived from words that do carry meaning when they occur in other contexts and serve different functions.^[5]

All of the sentence-final particles of Standard Chinese are unstressed and, unlike most syllables in the language, do not carry tone.^[5]

le (了): Expressing a completed action (could be in the past, present, or future, depending on time markers), or a change in state.
ba (吧): Soliciting approval, softening an imperative or giving an expression, could also express mocking, sarcasm, or passive aggressiveness depending on tone and context.
ou (哦): Adds friendliness or intimacy, used frequently after warnings.
ma (嘛): Expresses that the speaker believes something is obvious or simple, sometimes signifying frustration or impatience. Can also be used to intensify a command or suggestion.
a (啊) or ya (呀): Expresses excitement or emphasis. Can be used in a question. The combination le a may be contracted as la (啦).
ne (呢): Question particle that elicits elaboration on a topic previously discussed. Can also be used to soften a question.
ma (嗎/吗): Forms a tag question.^[6]

A major use of sentence-final particles in Mandarin Chinese specifically is thought to be as a signal of the speaker's attitude, the intended force of the statement to which the particle is attached, and "how the utterance is to be taken by the hearer."^[1] For example, the addition of a particle may soften the tone of a question that might sound presumptuous or inappropriate without the particle. As such, sentence-final particles in this sense often perform an interpersonal function, rather than a grammatical one. Nevertheless, there are cases in which sentence-final particles do perform grammatical functions, such as Mandarin ma 嗎/吗, the "question particle," which changes the grammatical mood of a sentence to interrogative. Likewise, even though sentence-final particles can usually be omitted from a sentence without making the sentence ungrammatical or changing its meaning,^[1] some particles do contain information critical to the interpretation of an utterance's meaning, such as Mandarin le 了.^[5]

Japanese

In Japanese, there are many sentence-final particles that are used in formal as well as colloquial speech. Some examples include:

か ka: question. It turns a declarative sentence into a question.
っけ kke: doubt. Used when one is unsure of something. For example, 昨日だったっけ？ (kinō datta kke), "Was it yesterday?". Often used when talking to oneself.
な na: emotion. Used when one wants to express a personal feeling. May be used to state a fact in which one has emotional investment, to express one's admiration or emotional excitement, to soften an imperative, or to encourage agreement, as a mild imperative.
なあ nā: a lengthened version of the above, expresses strong emotion, either to encourage agreement, as above, or to express one's desires, e.g. 寿司を食べたいなぁ (sushi wo tabetai naa), "I want to eat sushi (so badly right now!)".
ね ne: agreement. Used when the speaker wants to verify or otherwise show agreement, reach consensus, or build solidarity with the listener.
の no: emphatic/informal interrogative/indirect imperative. May be used to form informal questions, or to give some sort of emphasis to one's statement. Depending on intonation and context, it may soften a statement (particularly in women's language), or to strongly assert one's belief in something. In this sense, it may also act as an indirect imperative, by indicating what the speaker believes should happen, thus, what the listener is expected to do.
さ sa: casualness, assertiveness. Contrasts with ne in that, where ne helps build solidarity and agreement, sa is often used to assert the speaker's own ideas or opinions. It is often used repeatedly in conversation to retain a listener's attention.
わ wa: soft declarative or emphatic. Used primarily by women, this particle has a meaning similar to yo, but it is less assertive.
よ yo: assertive. It means that you are asserting what preceded the particle as information you are confident in, particularly when supplying information the listener is believed not to know.
ぜ ze: informal hortative/emphatic. Used to push someone to do something, or to remind them of something. In certain contexts, it can carry a threatening overtone.
ぞ zo: assertive, emphatic. Used to strongly assert the speaker's decisions and opinions, and serves to discourage dissent or protest.

English

English also has some words and phrases that act somewhat like sentence final particles, but primarily only in colloquial speech. However, there are others, called tag questions, which are less colloquial and can be used for any situation. All are generally discourse particles rather than modal particles. For example:

"man" in "Don't do it, man."
"right" in "The blue one, right?"
"no" in "You want to go, no?"
"don't you" in "You want to, don't you?"
"are they" in "They're not hurt, are they?"
"aren't they" in "They're here, aren't they?"
"is it" in "The plate isn't broken, is it?"
"isn't it" in "The plane is here, isn't it?"

All but the first are tag questions. Notice how when the main sentence is affirmative, the tag question is negative, and vice versa.^[7]

Portuguese

Portuguese uses several sentence-final particles. For example:

"né": mainly used to seek confirmation or agreement. It may also be used to denote sarcasm or to express that a statement is obvious.
"sim": mainly used to emphasize a statement. It's often translated as "do" as in: "eu sei, sim." = "I do know."
"lá": used with some verbs to emphasize a negation as in "sei lá." = "I don't know."
"já": has many different uses, one of them is to express surprise.
"ó": rarely used in writing, but common in speech. Used to draw the listener's attention to something.
"aí": has many different uses, one of them is to soften a request or to make a sentence sound more colloquial.^[8]

Spanish

In the same way that certain words and phrases are used as sentence final particles above in the section on English (as discourse particles), some Spanish words and phrases can be used this way as well; once again, these are usually called tag questions. For example:

"verdad" (right) in "Te gustan los libros, ¿verdad?" (You (informal) like books, right?)
"no" (no) in "Le toca pasar la aspiradora, ¿no?" (It's your (formal) turn to vacuum, no?)
"no es verdad" (isn't that right) in "Eres de Perú, ¿no es verdad?" (You're (informal) from Peru, isn't that right?)

Note that in Spanish, the question marks are placed around the tag question, and not around the entire sentence (although English only uses the single final question mark, it is implied that the entire sentence, and not just the tag, is the question).^[9]

Related Research Articles

Eh is a spoken interjection used in many varieties of English that is similar in meaning to "Excuse me?", "Please repeat that", or "Huh?". It is also commonly used as an alternative to the question tag right?, i.e., method for inciting a reply, as in "Don't you think?", "You agree with me, right?", as in, "It's nice here, eh?". In the Americas, it is most commonly associated with Canada and Canadian English, and the area stretching from northern Wisconsin up to Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Similar interjections exist in many other languages, such as Azerbaijani and Italian.

Japanese is an agglutinative, synthetic, mora-timed language with simple phonotactics, a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent. Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, and sentence structure is topic–comment. Its phrases are exclusively head-final and compound sentences are exclusively left-branching. Sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or make questions. Nouns have no grammatical number or gender, and there are no articles. Verbs are conjugated, primarily for tense and voice, but not person. Japanese adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has a complex system of honorifics with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned.

In grammar, the term particle has a traditional meaning, as a part of speech that cannot be inflected, and a modern meaning, as a function word associated with another word or phrase, generally in order to impart meaning. Although a particle may have an intrinsic meaning, and indeed may fit into other grammatical categories, the fundamental idea of the particle is to add context to the sentence, expressing a mood or indicating a specific action. In English, for instance, the phrase "oh well" has no purpose in speech other than to convey a mood. The word 'up' would be a particle in the phrase to 'look up', implying that one researches something, rather than literally gazing skywards. Many languages use particles, in varying amounts and for varying reasons. In Hindi, for instance, they may be used as honorifics, or to indicate emphasis or negation. In some languages they are more clearly defined, such as Chinese, which has three types of zhùcí : Structural, Aspectual, and Modal. Structural particles are used for grammatical relations. Aspectual particles signal grammatical aspects. Modal particles express linguistic modality. Polynesian languages, which are almost devoid of inflection, use particles extensively to indicate mood, tense, and case.

In linguistics, modal particles are always uninflected words, and are a type of grammatical particle. They are used to indicate how the speaker thinks that the content of the sentence relates to the participants' common knowledge or add mood to the meaning of the sentence. Languages that use many modal particles in their spoken form include Dutch, Danish, German, Hungarian, Russian, Telugu, Nepali, Indonesian, Chinese and Japanese. The translation is often not straightforward and depends on the context.

A double negative is a construction occurring when two forms of grammatical negation are used in the same sentence. Multiple negation is the more general term referring to the occurrence of more than one negative in a clause. In some languages, double negatives cancel one another and produce an affirmative; in other languages, doubled negatives intensify the negation. Languages where multiple negatives affirm each other are said to have negative concord or emphatic negation. Portuguese, Persian, French, Russian, Greek, Spanish, Old English, Italian, Afrikaans, Hebrew are examples of negative-concord languages. This is also true of many vernacular dialects of modern English. Chinese, Latin, German, Dutch, Japanese, Swedish and modern Standard English are examples of languages that do not have negative concord. Typologically, it occurs in a minority of languages.

The imperative mood is a grammatical mood that forms a command or request.

The grammar of Standard Chinese or Mandarin shares many features with other varieties of Chinese. The language almost entirely lacks inflection; words typically have only one grammatical form. Categories such as number and verb tense are frequently not expressed by any grammatical means, but there are several particles that serve to express verbal aspect and, to some extent, mood.

A question is an utterance which serves as a request for information. Questions are sometimes distinguished from interrogatives, which are the grammatical forms typically used to express them. Rhetorical questions, for instance, are interrogative in state but may not be considered bona fide questions, as they are not expected to be answered.

An interrogative word or question word is a function word used to ask a question, such as what, which, when, where, who, whom, whose, why, whether and how. They are sometimes called wh-words, because in English most of them start with wh-. They may be used in both direct questions and in indirect questions. In English and various other languages the same forms are also used as relative pronouns in certain relative clauses and certain adverb clauses. It can also be used as a modal, since question words are more likely to appear in modal sentences, like

A tag question is a construction in which an interrogative element is added to a declarative or an imperative clause. The resulting speech act comprises an assertion paired with a request for confirmation. For instance, the English tag question "You're John, aren't you?" consists of the declarative clause "You're John" and the interrogative tag "aren't you?"

An interrogative clause is a clause whose form is typically associated with question-like meanings. For instance, the English sentence "Is Hannah sick?" has interrogative syntax which distinguishes it from its declarative counterpart "Hannah is sick". Also, the additional question mark closing the statement assures that the reader is informed of the interrogative mood. Interrogative clauses may sometimes be embedded within a phrase, for example: "Paul knows who is sick", where the interrogative clause "who is sick" serves as complement of the embedding verb "know".

Taba is a Malayo-Polynesian language of the South Halmahera–West New Guinea group. It is spoken mostly on the islands of Makian, Kayoa and southern Halmahera in North Maluku province of Indonesia by about 20,000 people.

Bulgarian grammar is the grammar of the Bulgarian language. Bulgarian is a South Slavic language that evolved from Old Church Slavonic—the written norm for the Slavic languages in the Middle Ages which derived from Proto-Slavic. Bulgarian is also a part of the Balkan sprachbund, which also includes Greek, Macedonian, Romanian, Albanian and the Torlakian dialect of Serbian. It shares with them several grammatical innovations that set it apart from most other Slavic languages, even other South Slavic languages. Among these are a sharp reduction in noun inflections—Bulgarian has lost the noun cases but has developed a definite article, which is suffixed at the end of words. In its verbal system, Bulgarian is set apart from most Slavic languages by the loss of the infinitive, the preservation of most of the complexities of the older conjugation system and the development of a complex evidential system to distinguish between witnessed and several kinds of non-witnessed information.

Grammatical particles, or simply particles, are words that convey certain grammatical meanings. The term is often applied to words that are difficult to classify according to traditional grammar. Both Classical Chinese and Modern Standard Chinese make use of particles. In Chinese, particles are known as zhùcí or yǔzhùcí. They belong to function words. In other words, they have no lexical meaning, but are used to indicate certain grammatical information. This contrasts with content words. Particles in Chinese usually take the neutral tone.^{: p. 238}

In linguistics, a sentence function refers to a speaker's purpose in uttering a specific sentence, phrase, or clause. Whether a listener is present or not is sometimes irrelevant. It answers the question: "Why has this been said?" The four basic sentence forms in English are the declarative, interrogative, exclamative, and the imperative. These correspond to the discourse functionsstatement, question, exclamation, and command respectively. The different forms involve different combinations in word order, the addition of certain auxiliaries or particles, or other times by providing a special form. There is no clear one-to-one correspondence between the forms/structures and their discourse functions. For example, a declarative form can be used to ask a question, and interrogative form can be used to make a statement.

Yes and no, or word pairs with similar words, are expressions of the affirmative and the negative, respectively, in several languages, including English. Some languages make a distinction between answers to affirmative versus negative questions and may have three-form or four-form systems. English originally used a four-form system up to and including Early Middle English and Modern English has reduced to a two-form system consisting of 'yes' and 'no'. It exists in many facets of communication, such as: eye blink communication, head movements, Morse Code, and sign language. Some languages, such as Latin, do not have yes-no word systems.

Singlish is an English-based creole language spoken in Singapore. Singlish arose out of a situation of prolonged language contact between speakers of many different languages in Singapore, including Hokkien, Malay, Teochew, Cantonese and Tamil.

In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used for signaling modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying. The term is also used more broadly to describe the syntactic expression of modality – that is, the use of verb phrases that do not involve inflection of the verb itself.

The Hokuriku dialect is a Japanese dialect group spoken in Hokuriku region, consists of northern Fukui Prefecture, Ishikawa Prefecture, Toyama Prefecture, and Sado Island in Niigata Prefecture. Mainland Niigata dialect is classified into Tōkai-Tōsan dialect and Tōhoku dialect and southern Fukui dialect is classified into Kansai dialect.

In linguistics and grammar, affirmation and negation are ways in which grammar encodes positive and negative polarity into verb phrases, clauses, or other utterances. An affirmative (positive) form is used to express the validity or truth of a basic assertion, while a negative form expresses its falsity. For example, the affirmative sentence "Jane is here" asserts that it is true that Jane is currently located near the speaker. Conversely, the negative sentence "Jane is not here" asserts that it is not true that Jane is currently located near the speaker.

References

1 2 3 Lin, Huey Hannah (2005). Contextualizing Linguistic Politeness in Chinese (PhD dissertation). The Ohio State University.
↑ Morita, Emi (2005). Negotiation of Contingent Talk:The Japanese interactional particles ne and sa. John Benjamins.
↑ Fox, Barbara (2007), Principles shaping grammatical practices: an exploration., Discourse Studies 9, p. 303
↑ Chao, Yuen Ren (1968). A Grammar of Spoken Chinese . Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 149. ISBN 0-520-00219-9.
1 2 3 Li, Charles N.; Thompson, Sandra A. (1981). Mandarin Chinese: A functional reference grammar. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 238–318. ISBN 978-0-520-06610-6.
↑ "Chinese Final Particles: Signals for Tone of Voice". ChineseClass101.com Blog. 2021-01-18. Retrieved 2021-07-21.
↑ http://spanish.about.com/od/sentencestructure/g/question_tag_gl.htm Page is about Spanish, but mentions tag questions in English
↑ Johnen, Thomas (January 1997). "Aí como partícula modal do português". In: Mota, Jacyra (Ed.): Atas do 1O Congresso Internacional da Associação Brasileira de Lingüística: Vol. 2: Comunicações, Disquete 06: Lexicologia e Semântica, Semantic, File: Comunic03. Salvador: Instituto de Letras da Universidade Federal da Bahia.
↑ "That's a Tag Question, Isn't It?".

External links

Thai Particles (Large list of Thai particles and exclamations with explanations and example sentences).
The Typological Value of the Chinese Modality Particles (.doc)

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[Lin1-1] 1 2 3 Lin, Huey Hannah (2005). Contextualizing Linguistic Politeness in Chinese (PhD dissertation). The Ohio State University.

[Morita-2] Morita, Emi (2005). Negotiation of Contingent Talk:The Japanese interactional particles ne and sa. John Benjamins.

[Fox-3] Fox, Barbara (2007), Principles shaping grammatical practices: an exploration., Discourse Studies 9, p. 303

[Chao-4] Chao, Yuen Ren (1968). A Grammar of Spoken Chinese . Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 149. ISBN 0-520-00219-9.

[Li_&_Thompson-5] 1 2 3 Li, Charles N.; Thompson, Sandra A. (1981). Mandarin Chinese: A functional reference grammar. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 238–318. ISBN 978-0-520-06610-6.

[6] "Chinese Final Particles: Signals for Tone of Voice". ChineseClass101.com Blog. 2021-01-18. Retrieved 2021-07-21.

[7] ttp://spanish.about.com/od/sentencestructure/g/question_tag_gl.htm Page is about Spanish, but mentions tag questions in English

[8] Johnen, Thomas (January 1997). "Aí como partícula modal do português". In: Mota, Jacyra (Ed.): Atas do 1O Congresso Internacional da Associação Brasileira de Lingüística: Vol. 2: Comunicações, Disquete 06: Lexicologia e Semântica, Semantic, File: Comunic03. Salvador: Instituto de Letras da Universidade Federal da Bahia.

[9] "That's a Tag Question, Isn't It?".

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]