4. The Particle Particles usually refer to the word (or, sometimes, phrase) immediately
following and give special prominence to the notion expressed by this word (or
phrase), or single it out in some other way, depending on the meaning of the
particle.
The question of the place of a particle in sentence structure remains
unsolved. The following three solutions are possible:
(1) a particle is a separate secondary member of the sentence, which should
be given a special name;
(2) a particle is an element in the part of the sentence which is formed by the
word (or phrase) to which the particle refers (thus the particle may be an element
of the subject, predicate, object, etc.);
(3) a particle neither makes up a special part of the sentence, nor is it an
element in any part of the sentence; it stands outside the structure of the sentence
and must be neglected when analysis of a sentence is given.
Each of these three views entails some difficulties and none of them can be
proved to be the correct one, so that the decision remains arbitrary.
