Function Words

Function Words

2.2.1 General definition

Function words (or grammatical words of systematic words or structure class words)are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning, but instead serve to express grammatical relationship with order words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker. The function words signal the structural relationships that words have to one another and are the glue that holds sentence together. Thus, they serve as important elements to the sentences of sentences. Function words might be propositions, pronouns, auxiliary verbs, conjunctions, grammatical articles or particles, all of which belong to the group of closed-class words “function words are a classed class. A person cannot rosily invent a new propositioned conjunction.” (Mark Aronoff and Kristen Anne Fudeman, What is morphology? Wiley-blackwell, 2005).

Fries in Aziz (1995) classifies the function words into; (1) Noun determiners, (2) Auxiliaries, (3) Preposition, (4) conjunction and (5) interrogators.