Lecture
In linguistics, function words (structure words) (also called functors) are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning, and that express grammatical relations between other words within a sentence, or indicate the relation or mood of the speaker. They signal the structural relations of words to one another and serve as a connecting link between sentences. Thus, they form important elements in the structure of sentences.
Words that are not function words are called content words (or open-class words, or lexical words, or autosemantic words): they include nouns, verbs, adjectives, and most adverbs, although some adverbs are function words (for example, then and why). Dictionaries define the specific meanings of content words, but can only describe the general usage of function words. In contrast, grammars describe the usage of function words in detail, but treat lexical words only in general terms.
Since this was first proposed in 1952 by C. C. Fries, this distinction between function/structure words and content/lexical words has had a major influence on the grammar used in second-language learning and in the teaching of English.
Function words — lexically non-independent words that do not have a nominative function in the language (they do not name objects, properties, or relations), but merely express various semantic-syntactic relations between words, sentences, and parts of sentences. They are contrasted with content, or independent, words, differing from them, besides in meaning, by the absence of morphological categories. Approaching inflectional morphemes, function words lie on the border between vocabulary and grammar and in fact belong to the sphere of the grammatical means of a language. They exceed content words in frequency of use, but are fewer in number, forming a list that is close to closed
In foreign linguistics, function and content parts of speech are usually not contrasted, although the category of relative words is sometimes distinguished, including articles, prepositions (postpositions), and conjunctions; the French linguistic tradition also classifies pronouns as function words[1
Function words can be prepositions, pronouns, auxiliary verbs, conjunctions, grammatical articles, or particles, which belong to the closed class of words. Interjections are sometimes considered function words, but they belong to the open class of words. Function words may or may not be inflected, or may take affixes.
Function words belong to the closed class of words in grammar, since new function words are very rarely created in the course of speech, whereas in the open class of words (that is, nouns, verbs, adjectives, or adverbs) new words can be added easily (for example, slang words, technical terms, as well as borrowings and adaptations of foreign words). See neologism.
Each function word either provides some grammatical information about other words in the sentence or clause and cannot be separated from other words, or it can indicate the speaker's mental model regarding what is being said.
Grammatical words, as a class, may have phonological properties different from content words. Sometimes grammatical words do not use the full range of a language's sounds. For example, in some Khoisan languages most content words begin with clicks, but very few function words do. In English, very few words other than function words begin with the voiced th [ð] (see Pronunciation of English th); English function words may have fewer than three letters «I», «an», «in», while non-function words usually have three or more «eye», «Ann», «inn» (see Three-letter rule).
Below is a list of words that are considered function words:
Function words share certain common features. Phonetically, they are typically characterized by being unstressed (exceptions in Russian — the particles да (yes) and нет (no)), and in tonal languages, by the absence of tone; they tend toward monosyllabism when underived. Function words are usually not divided into morphemes and do not form paradigms (which distinguishes them, for example, from copula verbs and auxiliary verbs in analytic forms such as the Russian буду читать [I will read]). Syntactically, they are distinguished by their inability to be sentence constituents (unlike conjunctive words), though they may be part of such constituents alongside content words.
By origin, function words are divided into primary (non-derived), for example Russian в (in), к (to), при (by); и (and), а (but), или (or); бы (would), же (emphatic particle), уж (indeed), — and non-primary (derived): в течение (during); несмотря на то что (despite the fact that); пускай (let), давай (let's). Derived function words are former content words that have lost the nominative meaning and syntactic properties characteristic of the corresponding parts of speech, and have become separated from their other forms as a result of functional-semantic reinterpretation.
The number of categories of function words distinguished by shared function varies by language, and their semantics largely depends on the type of language: in analytic languages function words (especially particles) take on functions that in synthetic languages are performed by affixes. In many languages, relative words (prepositions or postpositions), conjunctions, particles and articles are distinguished.
The degree of development of certain categories of function words is also related to the state of its literary form, especially its written variety: thus, subordinating conjunctions are more common specifically in written speech
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