Chinese particles

Both Classical Chinese and modern Chinese contain a number of grammatical particles. These can have a number of different functions depending on their placement in a sentence; however, some general roles played by particles in Chinese include indicating possession, a continuous action, completion, addition of emotion, softening of a command, and so forth.

In Mandarin, particles are known as yǔzhù (语助), zhùzì (助字), zhùcí (助词/助辭) or yǔcí (语词). They are part of the Classical Chinese category of "empty words," or xūzì (虛字), along with prepositions, conjunctions, and—according to some grammarians—pronouns and adverbs; these contrast with "solid words" or shízì (实字), which include verbs, nouns, adjectives, numerals and measure words. (Compare the similar notion of the contrast between function words and content words.)

The function of a Chinese particle depends on its position in the sentence and on context. In many cases, the character for a Chinese particle is only used phonetically; thus, the same particle could be written with different characters that share the same sound. For example, qí/jī (其, which originally represented the word jī "winnowing basket", now represented by the character 箕), a common particle in classical Chinese, has, among others, various meaning as listed below.

The following list provides examples of the functions of particles in Classical Chinese. Classical Chinese refers to the traditional style of written Chinese that is modeled on the Classics, such as Confucius' Analects. Thus, its usage of particles differs from that of vernacular and modern Chinese.

Written vernacular Mandarin, known in Chinese as 白话, refers to standard written Chinese that is based on the vernacular language used during the period between imperial China and the early 20th century. The use of particles in vernacular Chinese differs from that of Classical Chinese, as can be seen in the following examples. Usage of particles in modern Standard Chinese is similar to that illustrated here.

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