Re: CHAT: New Member With Questions

On Fri, 16 Mar 2001, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:

> On Thu, 15 Mar 2001, Tristan Alexander McLeay wrote:
>
> > >prepositions ... "particles"
> >
> > What is the difference between prepositions and particles?
> > And are they really prepositions in English, given that they sometimes go
> > after what they modify (like in 'where do you come from?')?
>
> Greetings!
>
> "Particles" really does seem to be a catchall term.  I do know it's used
> in Korean (and in Japanese).  The postpositions seem to be lumped into
> the particle category in Korean grammars (for English speakers; I'm not
> sure what a Korean grammar for Koreans looks like) because they behave
> similarly (i.e. goes after the phrase it modifies).  However, there are
> non-postposition particles, such as the posessive, topic, subject,
> object, and indirect particles.
Actually, I take that back; when my mom taught me some (better) Korean
this winter, she *did* use Korean grammatical terms that I don't recall;
but I do seem to recall that "particles" (including postpositions) seemed
to be a class of their own.

YHL