Function Word Article Index for
Function
Website Links For
Function
 

Information About

Function Word




Function words may be Preposition s, Pronoun s, Auxiliary Verb s, Conjunction s, Grammatical Article s or Particle s, all of which belong to the group of Closed Class Word s. Interjection s are sometimes considered function words but they belong to the group of Open Class Word s. Function words may or may not be Inflected or may have Affix es.

They belong to the closed class of words in Grammar in that it is very uncommon to have new function words created in the course of speech, whereas in the Open Class Word , that is nouns, verbs, adjectives, or adverbs, new words may be formed readily (such as Slang words, technical terms, adoptions and adaptations of foreign words). See Neologism .

Each function word gives some grammatical information on other words in a sentence or Clause , and cannot be isolated from other words, or it may indicate the speaker's mental position as to what is being said.

Grammatical words, as a class, can have distinct phonological properties from content words. Grammatical words sometimes do not make full use of all the sounds in a language. For example, in some of the Khoisan Languages , most content words begin with Clicks , but very few function words do. In English, only function words begin with voiced ''th-'' (see Pronunciation Of English Th ).

Here follows a list of the type of words included in function words:
  • Article s - ''the'' and ''a''. In highly inflected languages, the articles may take on the case of the Declension of the following noun.

  • Pronoun s - inflected in English, as ''he''-''him'', ''she''-''her'', etc.

  • Adposition s - Uninflected in English

  • Conjunction s - uninflected in English

  • Auxiliary Verb s - forming part of the Conjugation (pattern of the Tense s of main verbs), always inflected

  • Interjection s - sometimes called "filled pauses", uninflected

  • Particle s - convey the attitude of the speaker and are uninflected, as ''if'', ''then'', ''well'', ''however'', ''thus'', etc.

  • Expletive s - set up sentences, among other functions, ''It is'', ''There are'', etc.

  • Pro-sentence s — ''yes'', ''okay'', etc.



REFERENCES