Assignment

FUNCTION WORDS

Compiled by:

Dewiyah

Elis Nurfajar Rachmawaty

Hasanah

Iis Darmayanti

Function words (or grammatical words) are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning, but instead serve to express grammatical relationships with other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker. Words that are not function words are called content words or open class words or lexical words: these include nouns, verbs, adjectives, and most adverbs, although some adverbs are function words (e.g., then and why). Dictionaries define the specific meanings of content words, but can only describe the general usages of function words. By contrast, grammars describe the use of function words in detail, but treat lexical words in general terms only.

Function words might be prepositions, pronouns, auxiliary verbs, conjunctions, grammatical articles or particles, all of which belong to the group of closed-class words. Interjections are sometimes considered function words but they belong to the group of open-class words. Function words might or might not be inflected or might have affixes.

Function words 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 of words (that is, nouns, verbs, adjectives, or adverbs) new words may be added readily (such as slang words, technical terms, and adoptions and adaptations of foreign words).

Each function word both gives some grammatical information on other words in a sentence and cannot be isolated from other words, or it may indicate the speaker's mental model 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. Most content words begin with clicks, but very few function words do. In English, only function words begin with voiced th- [ð]

The following is a list of the kind of words considered to be function words:

• Articles — the, a and an. In some inflected languages, the articles may take on the case of the declension of the following noun.
• Pronouns — inflected in English, as he — him, she — her, etc.
• Ad positions  — uninflected in English
• conjunctions — uninflected in English
• Auxiliary verbs — forming part of the conjugation (pattern of the tenses of main verbs), always inflected
• Interjections — sometimes called "filled pauses", uninflected
• Particles — convey the attitude of the speaker and are uninflected, as if, then, well, however, thus, etc.
• Expletives — take the place of sentences, among other functions.
• Pro-sentences — yes, okay, etc

Function Words: What we are calling "function words" are prepositions and conjunctions that don't mean anything in themselves but serve to indicate the ways other words relate to each other. Prepositions indicate relationships, and conjunctions join things together. In the sentences "Alfred fought with the vikings and won the battle by the thorn tree," "with" and "by" are prepositions that indicate relationships (where the battle was fought and whom it was fought against) and "and" indicates that two parts of the sentence are joined together.

The above description of word functions is radically simplified, but it should be enough to explain the concepts in the grammar and get you translating Old English as soon as possible. The important point to remember is that we will need to use certain orders of words or put certain endings on words in order to indicate what roles they are playing in a sentence. We will go over these concepts in more detail in the following sections, but first take a few moments to practice identifying the word functions in the exercises.

Function word, a word that is uninflected and serves a grammatical function but has little identifiable meaning

Closed-class word

            Word is a unit of language that native speakers can identify; "words are the blocks from which sentences are made"; "he hardly said ten words all morning"

determinative, determiner is one of a limited class of noun modifiers that determine the referents of noun phrases

            Preposition is a function word that combines with a noun or pronoun or noun phrase to form a prepositional phrase that can have an adverbial or adjectival relation to some other word.

            Pronoun is a function word that is used in place of a noun or noun phrase

Conjunctive, connective, continuative, conjunction - an uninflected function word that serves to conjoin words or phrases or clauses or sentences.

            Particle is a function word that can be used in English to form phrasal verbs

Grammatical meaning is the meaning of a word that depends on its role in a sentence; varies with inflectional form

·         Prepositions of, at, in, without, between

·         Pronouns he, they, anybody, it, one

·         Determiners the, a, that, my, more, much, either,

           Neither

·         Conjunctions and, that, when, while, although, or

·         Auxiliary verbs are (is, am, and are), have, got, do

·         Particles no, not, nor, as