Latin Particles and Word Order
Authors: Spevak Olga 
Published: November 2024

The term “particle” (Latin particula “a small part,” related to partes orationis “parts of speech, word classes”) means a short, especially indeclinable word. Traditionally, “particle” is used for invariable words in general (adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections), sometimes with the exclusion of adverbs. The term “particle” is used in both a narrower and a broader sense. In a narrower sense, particles can be defined as invariable words with a grammatical function that do not fit into a standard classification of word classes (including conjunctions and connectors) (see Crystal 2008 cited in the Oxford Bibliographies in Linguistics article Phonetics). Unlike adverbs of all sorts, including modal or epistemic adverbs such as certe “certainly,” particles are non-autonomous words, i.e. words that cannot be used alone to form a sentence. Latin particles in a narrower sense include, especially, emphasizing (focusing) particles, interrogative particles, and interactional particles. In a broader sense, the term ‘particle’ is used for connective words of all sorts, including coordinators (et “and”), used for sentence connection, connectors (autem “but”), parenthetical words (quaeso “please”), temporal markers (nunc “now”), and modal or epistemic adverbs (scilicet “obviously”). They are called “discourse/pragmatic particles” or “discourse/pragmatic markers.” Studies on Latin particles are concerned, in particular, with the apparent synonymy of connectors and particles; the description of their meaning(s)/functions, since connectors and particles are often polysemous and polyfunctional; the position they occupy in the sentence; and the evolution of their meaning(s) in the diachrony of Latin. Word order in Latin is variable—“free word order”—in that the position of a word in its clause is not determined by the grammatical structure of the clause, nor is it indicative of the grammatical function that the word fulfils in the clause. The way in which words are ordered in a Latin clause or sentence can be considered from several perspectives. Most of the recent studies adopt a functional approach working with the concepts of “given” information and “new” information (also known as topic—comment; or theme—rheme). They describe Latin word order in terms of Topic (the entity the sentence is about) and Focus (salient information). These studies concentrate on the main sentence or clause constituents (subject, object(s), verb), which often bear a pragmatic function. The main sentence or clause constituents as well as various adjuncts (“circumstantials”) are described as “mobile” words, i.e. words that can occupy any position in the sentence. Mobile words are distinguished from “non-mobile” words, which have a more or less fixed position: prepositions, interrogative and relative pronouns, conjunctions, connectors, coordinators, and subordinators. A number of studies deal with the categorization of Latin from a typological point of view. They discuss whether Latin belongs to the S(ubject) O(bject) V(erb) or S(ubject) V(erb) O(bject) languages and in some cases postulate a word order change over time. Some studies of Latin word order adopt the formal approach of Generative Grammar. In these various approaches, word order at the clause level, concerning the position of the verb and the other constituents, is distinguished from word order at the noun (and prepositional) phrase level, concerning the position of modifiers with respect to their head noun (anteposition, postposition). In Latin, modifiers can be separated from their head noun (so-called discontinuity or hyperbaton).