Brief contents of the course

Particles

Particles are functional words of specifying and limiting meaning. They show subjective attitude. They refer to the word (or phrase) immediately following and give special prominence to the notion expressed by this word, or single it out in some other way, depending on the meaning of the particle. One just does what is reasonable. She could feel anger, even at this late date.
It can stand apart from the word it refers to – I have only met him twice. It is a specific part of the sentence, because without it the meaning of it changes.
The particle not deserves special treatment. It may stand outside the predicate – Not till we landed did we realize that we are alive. Or in short answers: Certainly not. Perhaps not. Of course not. (with modal words). It appears to be the main part of the sentence. Another use is within the predicate, as part of the verb: I am not, he is not, she does not. Here the particle is an auxiliary element within the morphology of the verb, and it has no syntactic function of its own. Its becoming a morpheme within the verb form is seen in the contracted forms isn’t, wouldn’t.
Sometimes the word almost causes doubts whether it is an adverb or a particle: The boat almost overturned. – whether it shows the subjective attitude (it was in danger of overturning) or it denotes the manner in which the action was conducted. It can be felt in the translation – чуть не перевернулась – particle, почти перевернулась – adverb.

Interjection

It is doubtful whether they are involuntary outcries, provoked by feelings of pain, joy, surprise, not restricted to any given language but common to all human beings as biological phenomena are.
But this only accounts for the etymology of interjections, which appeared from involuntary outcries, but now they belong to the word stock of the language as much as other types of words do. Interjections belonging to a certain language may contain sounds foreign to other languages. Thus, the English interjection alas contains the vowel phoneme [ ], which is not found either in Russian or in German language; the Russian interjection ах contains the consonant phoneme [x], which is not found in English.
The interjections, as different from nouns, verbs, prepositions, are not names of anything, but expressions of emotions. Thus, the emotion expressed by the interjection alas may be named despair, but can’t be named alas.
Some of the interjections express quite definite meanings (alas can never express joy), others express feeling in general (oh – surprise, joy, disappointment, fear).
On the phrase level the problem is whether an interjection can be part of any phrase and what types of words can be connected with it. Usually interjections are syntactically isolated, but sometimes it can be connected with a group “preposition+noun”, naming the person or thing which causes the feeling expressed by the interjection: Alas for my friends!
The interjection oh can be followed by the adjective dear to form a phrase which itself is equivalent to an interjection: Oh dear! It can only be the first component of a phrase.
On the sentence level we have to consider interjections a part of the sentence, loosely connected with the rest of it, and approaching a parenthesis in its character. Oh, she used awful grammar, but she was trying so hard to be elegant. They can form a sentence by themselves: “Oh!” said Scarlet, her hopes dashed. Some phrases are equivalent to interjections: dear me! Goodness gracious!