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Function Word

Function words are grammatical words like determiners, conjunctions, prepositions, auxiliary verbs and pronouns that express structural relationships and have little meaningful content. Content words are nouns, verbs, adjectives and sometimes adverbs that convey information and meaning. Content words include people, places, things and ideas while function words make sentences grammatically correct. Speakers typically stress content words to emphasize important information but reduce function words as they are less important to the overall meaning.

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832 views

Function Word

Function words are grammatical words like determiners, conjunctions, prepositions, auxiliary verbs and pronouns that express structural relationships and have little meaningful content. Content words are nouns, verbs, adjectives and sometimes adverbs that convey information and meaning. Content words include people, places, things and ideas while function words make sentences grammatically correct. Speakers typically stress content words to emphasize important information but reduce function words as they are less important to the overall meaning.

Uploaded by

judeeanne
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Function word

Definition:
A word that expresses agrammatical or structural relationship with other words in a sentence.
In contrast to a content word, a function word has little or no meaningful content. Function words are also
known as grammatical words.
Function words include determiners (for example, the, that), conjunctions (and, but), prepositions (in,
of), pronouns (she, they), auxiliary verbs (be, have), modals (may, could), and quantifers (some, both).

Content words
Definition:
A word that conveys information in a text or speech act. Also known as a lexical word.
In his book The Secret Life of Pronouns (2011), social psychologist James W. Pennebaker expands this
definition: "Content words are words that have a culturally shared meaning in labeling an object or action. . . .
Content words are absolutely necessary to convey an idea to someone else."
Content words--which include nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives, and adverbs--belong to open classes of words:
that is, new members are readily added. Contrast withfunction word.

Content Words and Function Words
Content Words
It isn't surprising that content words are usually nouns, verbs, adjectives, and sometimes adverbs. Those are the
words that help us form a picture in our head; they give us the contents of our story and tell our listener where
to focus his or her attention. We want our listener to be able to quickly grasp the main content of our story, so
we make the content words easier to hear by bringing attention to them with added stress.
Category Description Examples
nouns people, places, things, and ideas Patty, Seattle, cars, happiness
main verbs verbs without auxilliaries ran, swim, thinks
adjectives words that describe nouns red, soft, careful
adverbs (except adverbs of frequency) words that describe verbs calmly, quickly, carefully
question words words that denote a question who, what, where, when, why
negatives words that negate not, never

Function Words
Function words are the words we use to make our sentences grammatically correct. Pronouns, determiners, and
prepositions, and auxiliary verbs are examples of function words. If our function words are missing or used
incorrectly, we are probably considered poor speakers of English, but our listener would probably still get the
main idea of what we are saying. Since function words don't give us the main information, we don't usually
want or need to do anything to give them added attention and the words remain unstressed. In addition,
sometimes we do things to deliberately push function words into the background... almost the opposite of
stressing. This is called reducing.
Category Description Examples
auxiliary verbs verbs that support the main verbs am, are, has, could, should
prepositions words that tell relation to other words at, on, to, near
conjunctions words that tie clauses together and, so, but, however
determiners words that give detail to nouns a, an, the, some, any
pronouns words that replace nouns I, it, we, they, he, she
Not very many aspects of English are concrete, and the idea of stressing content words, but not function words,
is a generalization and not a rule. Not every content word is said louder or longer, and not every function word
is reduced. A speaker chooses exactly which words to stress based on the message he or she is trying to send.

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