What does Function Word mean?
Definitions for Function Word
func·tion word
This dictionary definitions page includes all the possible meanings, example usage and translations of the word Function Word.
Princeton's WordNet
function word, closed-class wordnoun
a word that is uninflected and serves a grammatical function but has little identifiable meaning
Wiktionary
function wordnoun
A word that has little meaning when standing alone, but instead serves to express grammatical relationships with other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker, such as prepositions, pronouns, auxiliary verbs, or conjunctions.
Wikipedia
Function word
In linguistics, function words (also called functors) are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning and express grammatical relationships among other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker. They signal the structural relationships that words have to one another and are the glue that holds sentences together. Thus they form important elements in the structures of sentences.Words that are not function words are called content words (or open class words, lexical words, or autosemantic words) and include nouns, most verbs, adjectives, and most adverbs although some adverbs are function words (like then and why). Dictionaries define the specific meanings of content words but can describe only the general usages of function words. By contrast, grammars describe the use of function words in detail but treat lexical words only in general terms. Since it was first proposed in 1952 by C. C. Fries, the distinguishing of function/structure words from content/lexical words has been highly influential in the grammar used in second-language acquisition and English-language teaching.
Wikidata
Function word
Function 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. They signal the structural relationships that words have to one another and are the glue that holds sentences together. Thus, they serve as important elements to the structures of sentences. Consider the following two sentences: ⁕The winfy prunkilmonger from the glidgement mominkled and brangified all his levensers vederously. ⁕Glop angry investigator larm blonk government harassed gerfritz infuriated sutbor pumrog listeners thoroughly. In sentence above, the content words have been changed into nonsense syllables but it is not difficult for one to posit that winfy is an adjective, prunkilmonger, glidgement, levensers as nouns, mominkled, brangified as verbs and vederously as an adverb based on clues like the derivational and inflectional morphemes.. Hence, even without lexical meaning, the sentence can be said to be rather "meaningful". However, when the reverse is done and the function words are being changed to nonsense syllables as in sentence, the result is a totally incomprehensible sentence as the grammatical meaning which is signaled by the structure words is not present. Hence, function words provide the grammatical relationships between the open class words and helps create meaning in sentences.
Matched Categories
Numerology
Chaldean Numerology
The numerical value of Function Word in Chaldean Numerology is: 4
Pythagorean Numerology
The numerical value of Function Word in Pythagorean Numerology is: 9
Translations for Function Word
From our Multilingual Translation Dictionary
- mot-outilFrench
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"Function Word." Definitions.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 7 May 2024. <https://www.definitions.net/definition/Function+Word>.
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