Abstract: The article is devoted to the problem of the relationship of particles as a grammatical and functional class with words of other parts of speech. The relevance of the research is determined by its involvement in the problems of studying the phenomenon of transitivity between grammatical classes of words, in particular, the process of particularization in modern Russian. The object of the study is the adjective "literal". The subject of the study is the syntagmatic, semantic and pragmatic features of this lexeme. The purpose of the work is to establish the types of use of the word literal, their syntagmatic and semantic qualifications. The paper uses a descriptive method, as well as elements of comparative and quantitative analysis. The scientific novelty of the study consists in the fact that the range of meanings of the adjective literal is determined on the basis of the material of the NKRR and the specificity of its use in the function of the particle is revealed. It is established that the "literal" lexeme in modern Russian appears both in characteristic compatibility (with nouns with the meaning of speech or mental activity or its result) and in less or uncharacteristic compatibility (with words whose meaning is not related to speech activity). The features of the use of the adjective as a communicative-pragmatic unit functioning literally by the type of particle are determined: the presence of the pragmatic meaning ‘not real’, ‘similar’ while preserving the morphological and syntactic properties of the significant word. The main conclusion concerns the qualification of the word literal in such cases as a particle-like unit with hybrid properties. The results of the study can be used both in the study of other adjectival units involved in the process of particularization, and in lexicographic practice.