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In:Discourse-oriented Syntax
Edited by Josef Bayer, Roland Hinterhölzl and Andreas Trotzke
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 226] 2015
► pp. 121–158

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Is particle a (unified) category?

 | University of Patras
Published online: 16 December 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/la.226.06rou
The aim of this paper is to identify the syntactic status of so-called modal particles in Greek, bearing in mind their relation with complementizers, their interaction with modality and the left periphery, and to show that they belong to the repertoire of grammatical categories independently attested. It is argued that their ‘discourse’ linking is related to their presence in the left periphery. The Greek particles under consideration are next shown to have a grammatical function and to fall into two basic categories, verbal (tha, as) and nominal (na, mi). As such they occupy (extended-) projections associated with the verb and its argument structure respectively.
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