satellite phoneme [Lat. satelles ‘escort’]

Subcategory of particles that in English include such words as only, also, already, still. Scalar particles indicate alternative degrees that are implicit either from the focusbackgrounding structure ( topic vs comment) or the context. Thus in the sentence Only Jacob is coming, only expresses the exclusion of other background people known from the context. Such particles can also often refer to scalar degrees, such as Even Jacob is coming, which focuses on Jacob as being particularly high on the scale in question.