"modal particle" meaning in All languages combined

See modal particle on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Forms: modal particles [plural]
Etymology: From modal + particle, attested from the first half of the 19th century. Calque of German Modalpartikel. Etymology templates: {{calque|en|de|Modalpartikel}} Calque of German Modalpartikel Head templates: {{en-noun}} modal particle (plural modal particles)
  1. (linguistics) a word class that indicates the mood of an utterance Related terms: sentence-final particle Translations (linguistic class): 語氣助詞 /语气助词 (yǔqìzhùcí) (Chinese Mandarin), 語氣詞 /语气词 (yǔqìcí) (Chinese Mandarin), particule modale [feminine] (French), Modalpartikel [feminine] (German), Abtönungspartikel [feminine] (German), 心態詞 (shintaishi) (Japanese), 양상소사 (yangsangsosa) (alt: 樣相小辭) (Korean), modalpartikel [common-gender] (Swedish), từ ngữ khí (Vietnamese), ngữ khí từ (Vietnamese)

Inflected forms

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        "1": "en",
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        "3": "Modalpartikel"
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      "expansion": "Calque of German Modalpartikel",
      "name": "calque"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From modal + particle, attested from the first half of the 19th century. Calque of German Modalpartikel.",
  "forms": [
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      "form": "modal particles",
      "tags": [
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          "ref": "1843, Heinrich August Eduard Meyer, Vocabulary of the Language Spoken by the Aborigines of the Southern and Eastern Portions of the Settled Districts of South Australia:",
          "text": "As far as we have been able to discover, no particles indicating the tense are ever used in conjunction with this or any of the other modal particles (except -il) , so that the time of the action must be gathered from the context.",
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          "ref": "2005, Thorstein Fretheim, “Is there a rigid boundary between semantics and pragmatics?”, in Working Papers ISK, number 2/2005, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, via National Library of Norway, →ISSN, page 116:",
          "text": "The modal particle da in Norwegian conditional clauses is a lexical item that is specialized for use in conditionals but it occurs in positive as well as in negative conditional clauses.",
          "type": "quotation"
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      "id": "en-modal_particle-en-noun-X4ABDCzK",
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          "linguistics",
          "linguistics"
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        [
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        "(linguistics) a word class that indicates the mood of an utterance"
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          "word": "sentence-final particle"
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      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "cmn",
          "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
          "lang_code": "cmn",
          "roman": "yǔqìzhùcí",
          "sense": "linguistic class",
          "word": "語氣助詞 /语气助词"
        },
        {
          "code": "cmn",
          "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
          "lang_code": "cmn",
          "roman": "yǔqìcí",
          "sense": "linguistic class",
          "word": "語氣詞 /语气词"
        },
        {
          "code": "fr",
          "lang": "French",
          "lang_code": "fr",
          "sense": "linguistic class",
          "tags": [
            "feminine"
          ],
          "word": "particule modale"
        },
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          "code": "de",
          "lang": "German",
          "lang_code": "de",
          "sense": "linguistic class",
          "tags": [
            "feminine"
          ],
          "word": "Modalpartikel"
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          "lang": "German",
          "lang_code": "de",
          "sense": "linguistic class",
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            "feminine"
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        },
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          "code": "ja",
          "lang": "Japanese",
          "lang_code": "ja",
          "roman": "shintaishi",
          "sense": "linguistic class",
          "word": "心態詞"
        },
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          "alt": "樣相小辭",
          "code": "ko",
          "lang": "Korean",
          "lang_code": "ko",
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          "sense": "linguistic class",
          "word": "양상소사"
        },
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          "code": "sv",
          "lang": "Swedish",
          "lang_code": "sv",
          "sense": "linguistic class",
          "tags": [
            "common-gender"
          ],
          "word": "modalpartikel"
        },
        {
          "code": "vi",
          "lang": "Vietnamese",
          "lang_code": "vi",
          "sense": "linguistic class",
          "word": "từ ngữ khí"
        },
        {
          "code": "vi",
          "lang": "Vietnamese",
          "lang_code": "vi",
          "sense": "linguistic class",
          "word": "ngữ khí từ"
        }
      ]
    }
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  "word": "modal particle"
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          "text": "As far as we have been able to discover, no particles indicating the tense are ever used in conjunction with this or any of the other modal particles (except -il) , so that the time of the action must be gathered from the context.",
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          "text": "The modal particle da in Norwegian conditional clauses is a lexical item that is specialized for use in conditionals but it occurs in positive as well as in negative conditional clauses.",
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    {
      "code": "cmn",
      "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
      "lang_code": "cmn",
      "roman": "yǔqìzhùcí",
      "sense": "linguistic class",
      "word": "語氣助詞 /语气助词"
    },
    {
      "code": "cmn",
      "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
      "lang_code": "cmn",
      "roman": "yǔqìcí",
      "sense": "linguistic class",
      "word": "語氣詞 /语气词"
    },
    {
      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "lang_code": "fr",
      "sense": "linguistic class",
      "tags": [
        "feminine"
      ],
      "word": "particule modale"
    },
    {
      "code": "de",
      "lang": "German",
      "lang_code": "de",
      "sense": "linguistic class",
      "tags": [
        "feminine"
      ],
      "word": "Modalpartikel"
    },
    {
      "code": "de",
      "lang": "German",
      "lang_code": "de",
      "sense": "linguistic class",
      "tags": [
        "feminine"
      ],
      "word": "Abtönungspartikel"
    },
    {
      "code": "ja",
      "lang": "Japanese",
      "lang_code": "ja",
      "roman": "shintaishi",
      "sense": "linguistic class",
      "word": "心態詞"
    },
    {
      "alt": "樣相小辭",
      "code": "ko",
      "lang": "Korean",
      "lang_code": "ko",
      "roman": "yangsangsosa",
      "sense": "linguistic class",
      "word": "양상소사"
    },
    {
      "code": "sv",
      "lang": "Swedish",
      "lang_code": "sv",
      "sense": "linguistic class",
      "tags": [
        "common-gender"
      ],
      "word": "modalpartikel"
    },
    {
      "code": "vi",
      "lang": "Vietnamese",
      "lang_code": "vi",
      "sense": "linguistic class",
      "word": "từ ngữ khí"
    },
    {
      "code": "vi",
      "lang": "Vietnamese",
      "lang_code": "vi",
      "sense": "linguistic class",
      "word": "ngữ khí từ"
    }
  ],
  "word": "modal particle"
}

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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-04-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-04-01 using wiktextract (7de0cf9 and 9452535). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.