GRAMMATICAL CLASSIFICATION OF PARTICLES IN MODERN CHINESE

This article aims at studying one of the most controversial issues that researchers encounter when considering particles of modern Chinese - their classification. In modern Chinese, the importance of this class of functional words is immensely greater as a result of their ability to express certain morphological categories, additional emotional coloring as well as the speaker’s attitude to what is uttered. This paper describes grammatical features of particles, presents classifications of particles developed by Russian and Chinese linguists. As a result of analyzing these classifications, by means of comparison and generalization, a new grammatical classification of particles was offered. The classification includes 6 groups formed on the basis of particles’ meanings and functioning patterns: 1) structural, 2) aspect-tense, 3) modal; 4) particles used for enumeration; 5) comparative; 6) particles expressing numbers. In these groups, particles that had not been included there before were added. Thus, 之 zhī и所 suǒ entered the first group, all particles related to expressing aspect, time of the action and condition including 来着 láizhe来 lái1, 的 de2, 看 kan formed the second group, 们 men were added to the sixth group.