Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics
Subgroup of particles, especially analysed for German (‘Abtönungspartikeln’, e.g. aber, auch, 
, denn) which fit the content of an utterance to the context of speech. They have no lexical meaning and contribute nothing to the propositional meaning of a sentence. Modal particles may occur also in other functions, as adverbs (vielleicht ‘perhaps’), adjectives (einfach ‘simple’), scalar particles (nur ‘only’), or conjunctions (aber ‘but’). An application of the German research—to other languages is still lacking.
References
Bublitz, W. 1978. Ausdrucksweisen und Sprecherein-stellung im Deuschen und Englischen. Tübingen.
Doherty, M. 1987. Epistemic meaning. Berlin.
König, E. and S.Requardt.
1991. A relevancetheoretic approach to the analysis of modal particles in German. Multilingua 10. 63–77.
Nehls, D. 1989. German modal particles rendered by English auxiliary verbs. In H.Weydt (ed.), Sprechen mit Partikeln. Berlin.
Thurmair, M. 1989. Modalpartikeln und ihre Kombinationen. Tübingen.
Weydt, H. (ed.) 1979. Die Partikeln der deutschen Sprache. Berlin.
particle
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