Particle - a Small Lexical Unit or an Endless Scientific Project?

• Main Author: Elena A Markova
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University) 2019-12-01
• Series: Polylinguality and Transcultural Practices
• Subjects: theory of system-typological linguistic determinants; event determinant; occasional determinant; inflecting languages; root-isolating (amorphous) languages; polysemy
• Online Access: http://journals.rudn.ru/polylinguality/article/viewFile/20809/16786

The article aims to explain the popularity of studying particles in present-day Russian and foreign linguistics. A comparative analysis of various approaches to the study of particles proved their importance in language structure, and the linguistic concept created by the Russian scientist and systemologist I. Melnikov allowed to define the internal determinant of the language using functional words, namely, particles, as one of the subsystem elements responsible for the stability of the supersystem and the whole system work. Due to different external and internal factors influencing on the development of the Russian and English languages, the formation of particles as a wordclass is different. Russian particles are recognized as a functional class because it is impossible to express the communicative content of the utterance, the attitude to the content without their participation, which determines the event determinant and the dynamic deployment of perception, whether language units acting as particles in the English language have polystatuting, depending on the semantic and syntactic environment, which characterises the occasional determinant and static, descriptive perception.