Do native speakers consider particles separate words?


A frequent example used when saying that the definition of 'word' is fluid in
Japanese particles, which can be viewed as separate words or affixes. I want
to know whether a native speaker would say that, for example, 私は was one word
or two.




This is a simple and casual question, but it doesn't mean the answer would be
likewise. Sometimes a very basic notion in a language turns out to be
completely absent in another. One of my favorite examples is ["Framing a
question whose answer is an ordinal
number"](https://english.stackexchange.com/q/11481) on English.SE.

So, conclusion first, if you ask this to native speakers, I'm afraid answers
would vary according to personal opinions, because all we can do is to find
counterparts from foreign languages we know (that have solid notion of "word")
before we decide yes and no. It's very similar to how we sometimes casually
say 行った is 過去形 (past tense) or 先生たち is 複数形 (plural), where the analogy goes
pretty promising at first, but eventually fail at some point.

The difficulty around the question is twofold:

  1. **Word has little practical use in Japanese**  
In word-dividing languages we must have knowledge about what's word and what's
not, otherwise we can't write correctly. Naturally we come to have a grasp of
"word-ness" even when we don't write. But in Japanese, we don't put spaces in
sentence, don't count by word for amount of text, thus don't pay attention to
how many words are in a phrase. I guess most people don't have slight thought
about it until they're asked.

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xiWdv.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xiWdv.jpg)  
(Right: "Come back when you've summarized it succinctly within 20
characters!")

Just to be sure, I'm not saying that native speakers cannot perceive noun and
particle as separate "units". _Blackboard_ is easily divided into two
elements, but it's still one word, at least orthographically.

  2. **Japanese particle is neither standalone word nor affix**  
One of presuppositions behind the question is that, if something isn't a
standalone word (linguists call it _free morpheme_ ), it must be an affix (
_bound morpheme_ ). This law of excluded middle doesn't hold in Japanese. What
we call particle (助詞) in Japanese is established as
_[clitic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clitic)_ , which is in short, what
means like word but sounds like affix. It's a relatively new term, but it
doesn't mean that it's a creation by linguists to obfusticate people. Rather,
it's something hadn't had name due to its marginal presence in European
languages, whereas it abounds in some other parts of world. Japanese language
has "real" words and affixes besides particles, so particles are, after all,
particles.

How clitics are processed in space-inserting orthography is complicated and
usually tied with etymology: no space (Latin _populus **que**_ ), always
spaced (Polish _zaloguj **się**_ ), hyphened (Portuguese _conjuga- **me**_ ),
apostrophed (English _I' **ll**_ ), or affected by other factors (French _Je
**te** vois_ / _Je **t** 'aime_). You can see there's no decisive answer
whether clitics should fall under word or affix, from the standpoint of
grammar as well as writing (well, because they're neither...).




This is a simple and casual question, but it doesn't mean the answer would be
likewise. Sometimes a very basic notion in a language turns out to be
completely absent in another. One of my favorite examples is ["Framing a
question whose answer is an ordinal
number"](https://english.stackexchange.com/q/11481) on English.SE.

So, conclusion first, if you ask this to native speakers, I'm afraid answers
would vary according to personal opinions, because all we can do is to find
counterparts from foreign languages we know (that have solid notion of "word")
before we decide yes and no. It's very similar to how we sometimes casually
say 行った is 過去形 (past tense) or 先生たち is 複数形 (plural), where the analogy goes
pretty promising at first, but eventually fail at some point.

The difficulty around the question is twofold:

  1. **Word has little practical use in Japanese**  
In word-dividing languages we must have knowledge about what's word and what's
not, otherwise we can't write correctly. Naturally we come to have a grasp of
"word-ness" even when we don't write. But in Japanese, we don't put spaces in
sentence, don't count by word for amount of text, thus don't pay attention to
how many words are in a phrase. I guess most people don't have slight thought
about it until they're asked.

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xiWdv.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xiWdv.jpg)  
(Right: "Come back when you've summarized it succinctly within 20
characters!")

Just to be sure, I'm not saying that native speakers cannot perceive noun and
particle as separate "units". _Blackboard_ is easily divided into two
elements, but it's still one word, at least orthographically.

  2. **Japanese particle is neither standalone word nor affix**  
One of presuppositions behind the question is that, if something isn't a
standalone word (linguists call it _free morpheme_ ), it must be an affix (
_bound morpheme_ ). This law of excluded middle doesn't hold in Japanese. What
we call particle (助詞) in Japanese is established as
_[clitic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clitic)_ , which is in short, what
means like word but sounds like affix. It's a relatively new term, but it
doesn't mean that it's a creation by linguists to obfusticate people. Rather,
it's something hadn't had name due to its marginal presence in European
languages, whereas it abounds in some other parts of world. Japanese language
has "real" words and affixes besides particles, so particles are, after all,
particles.

How clitics are processed in space-inserting orthography is complicated and
usually tied with etymology: no space (Latin _populus **que**_ ), always
spaced (Polish _zaloguj **się**_ ), hyphened (Portuguese _conjuga- **me**_ ),
apostrophed (English _I' **ll**_ ), or affected by other factors (French _Je
**te** vois_ / _Je **t** 'aime_). You can see there's no decisive answer
whether clitics should fall under word or affix, from the standpoint of
grammar as well as writing (well, because they're neither...).

