Is like a function word

The practice of doing so is actually a field of research and the use of these words in such a manner can be classified as fillers, used while someone is busy grasping what they want to say and so on.

From Wikipedia we get a general overview of this:

Fillers are parts of speech which are
not generally recognized as purposeful
or containing formal meaning, usually
expressed as pauses such as uh, like
and er, but also extending to repairs
(«He was wearing a black—uh, I mean a
blue, a blue shirt»), and articulation
problems such as stuttering. Use is
normally frowned upon in mass media
such as news reports or films, but
they occur regularly in everyday
conversation, sometimes representing
upwards of 20% of «words» in
conversation.[citation needed] Fillers
can also be used as a pause for
thought («I arrived at, um—3
o’clock»).

The idea of whether these are valid in language or not depends on whether they follow the rules of the language, and hence, can’t be answered with a simple yes or no in this case. What we can say is that people do stand by the rules of syntax of their language and so can conclude that, for the most part, such ‘fillers’ are ‘correct’.

On the other hand, there are certain individuals and industries that hold different levels of contempt towards users, and this can be appreciated; if, for instance, you were listening to the radio and the DJ incessantly hummed and hawed with (what is to the listener) superfluous speech, then the satisfaction of tuning in would be degraded.

If we examine that last part in a little detail it is easy to see the variable conclusions one could draw, either of a person or a company, based not on what is being said but rather what is in between what is being said, the gaps et cetera. I think it’s safe to say that a great affinity towards this is not held by many.

To think about how it became so ‘popular’, I would reduce that to ‘common’, using the meaning of such which categorises social status. This might be a bit of a bold step, but I believe that where the above issues constrain one from committing, the lack of those constraints allows for another to become complacent and further habitually commit the act. That’s a sweeping remark, I know, only skimming the surface of an idea; and there is without doubt a whole lot to delve into in order to give this thought any credibility; I, for one, think it would be an interesting line of research — right now I don’t have the time or the inclination to do so, but encourage you to pursue should you care.

A function word is a word with no lexical meaning or semantic content on its own that primarily adds grammatical information. Also known as a functor, form word, or structure-class word, this kind of word reveals the structural relationships between words in a sentence. Prepositions, conjunctions, and auxiliary verbs can all be function words and are considered important linguistic building blocks. Unlike function words, content words have specific lexical meanings.

In English, among other languages, a function word carries little meaning and is usually defined by its grammatical relationship to another word. Nouns like “dog,» adjectives like “green,” and verbs like “to run” generally provide the majority of a sentence’s meaning. They are part of the open class of words because languages can easily add or remove words from this group. For example, many newer English vocabulary words like “fax,” “website,” and “email” are part of the open class.

A function word is a word with no lexical meaning or semantic content on its own that primarily adds grammatical information.

A function word is a word with no lexical meaning or semantic content on its own that primarily adds grammatical information.

Conversely, function words are part of the closed class because languages do not typically add anything new to this group or borrow these words from other languages. Auxiliary words like “might” and “have,” conjunctions like “whether” and “that,” and some adverbs, including “too” and “very,” are all function words in English. A function word adds grammatical information rather than meaning to a sentence. For example, a function word like “the” when paired with the noun “dog” to form «the dog» can add grammatical information but does not change the noun’s meaning.

Traditionally, open class words were assumed to determine sentence structure while a function word was seen as just an addition. For example, a phrase like “The bear will see the honey,” was broken into a noun phrase (“the bear”) and a verb phrase (“will see the honey”). The function word “the” was considered just an addition to the noun phrase.

This traditional framework shifted by the mid-1980s when function words began to be understood as the determinants of categorical status. Thus the noun phrase “the bear” was interpreted as a determiner phrase (“the”) that contained a noun phrase (“bear”). Determiners like the function word “the” became heads of determiner phrases rather than just part of a noun phrase.

Some languages, such as Mandarin, are characterized by a profusion of function words. Function words are usually not stressed and therefore speakers often contract them in cases like using “I’ve” for “I have.” Children have a tendency to drop function words from their speech.

Content words include nouns, verbs, and adjectives and have an explainable lexical meaning. Unlike function words, content words are described in terms of their specific meanings rather than their syntactic or grammatical functions. Function and content words should be seen as forming a continuum rather than two different categories because some words, like the English preposition “behind,” share characteristics of both.

In English grammar, a function word is a word that expresses a grammatical or structural relationship with other words in a sentence.

In contrast to a content word, a function word has little or no meaningful content. Nonetheless, as Ammon Shea points out, «the fact that a word does not have a readily identifiable meaning does not mean that it serves no purpose.»

Function words are also known as:

  • structure words
  • grammatical words
  • grammatical functors
  • grammatical morphemes
  • function morphemes
  • form words
  • empty words

According to James Pennebaker, «function words account for less than one-tenth of 1 percent of your vocabulary but make up almost 60 percent of the words you use.»

Content Words vs. Function Words

Function words include determiners, conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns, auxiliary verbs, modals, qualifiers, and question words. Content words are words with specific meanings, such as nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and main verbs (those without helping verbs.) In the sentence, «The sly brown fox jumped gracefully over the lazy dog and cat,» the content words are:

  • fox, dog, and cat (nouns)
  • sly, brown, and lazy (adjectives)
  • gracefully (adverb)
  • jumped (main verb)

Function words include:

  • the (determiner)
  • over (preposition)
  • and (conjunction)

Even though the function words don’t have concrete meanings, sentences would make a lot less sense without them.

Determiners

Determiners are words such as articles (the, a), possessive pronouns (their, your), quantifiers (much), demonstratives (that, those), and numbers. They function as adjectives to modify nouns and go in front of a noun to show the reader whether the noun is specific or general, such as in «that coat» (specific) vs. «a coat» (general). 

  • Articles: a, an, the
  • Demonstratives: that, this, those, these
  • Possessive pronouns: my, your, their, our, ours, whose, his, hers, its, which 
  • Quantifiers: some, both, most, many, a few, a lot of, any, much, a little, enough, several, none, all

Conjunctions

Conjunctions connect parts of a sentence, such as items in a list, two separate sentences, or clauses and phrases to a sentence. In the previous sentence, the conjunctions are or and and.

  • Conjunctions: and, but, for, yet, neither, or, so, when, although, however, as, because, before 

Prepositions

Prepositions begin prepositional phrases, which contain nouns and other modifiers. Prepositions function to give more information about nouns. In the phrase «the river that flows through the woods.» The prepositional phrase is «through the woods,» and the preposition is «through.»

  • Prepositions: in, of, between, on, with, by, at, without, through, over, across, around, into, within

Pronouns

Pronouns are words that stand in for nouns. Their antecedent needs to be clear, or your reader will be confused. Take «It’s so difficult» as an example. Without context, the reader has no idea what «it» refers to. In context, «Oh my gosh, this grammar lesson,» he said. «It’s so difficult,» the reader easily knows that it refers to the lesson, which is its noun antecedent.

  • Pronouns: she, they, he, it, him, her, you, me, anybody, somebody, someone, anyone

Auxiliary Verbs

Auxiliary verbs are also called helping verbs. They pair with a main verb to change tense, such as when you want to express something in present continuous tense (I am walking), past perfect tense (I had walked), or future tense (I am going to walk there). 

  • Auxiliary verbs: be, is, am, are, have, has, do, does, did, get, got, was, were

Modals

Modal verbs express condition or possibility. It’s not certain that something is going to happen, but it might. For example, in «If I could have gone with you, I would have,» modal verbs include could and would.

  • Modals: may, might, can, could, will, would, shall, should

Qualifiers

Qualifiers function like adverbs and show the degree of an adjective or verb, but they have no real meaning themselves. In the sample sentence, «I thought that somewhat new dish was pretty darn delicious,» the qualifiers are somewhat and pretty.

  • Qualifiers: very, really, quite, somewhat, rather, too, pretty (much)

Question Words

It’s easy to guess what function that question words have in English. Besides forming questions, they can also appear in statements, such as in «I don’t know how in the world that happened,» where the question word is how.

  • Question words: how, where, what, when, why, who

Sources

  • Shea, Ammon Shea. «Bad English.» TarcherPerigee, 2014, New York.
  • Pennebaker, James. «The Secret Life of Pronouns.» Bloomsbury Press, 2011, New York.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In linguistics, function words (also called functors)[1] 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.[2]

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.[3]

Overview[edit]

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 because it is very uncommon to have new function words created in the course of speech. In the open class of words, i.e., 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 either: gives grammatical information about other words in a sentence or clause, and cannot be isolated from other words; or gives information about 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. For example, in some of the Khoisan languages, most content words begin with clicks, but very few function words do.[4] In English, very few words other than function words begin with the voiced th [ð][citation needed]. English function words may have fewer than three letters; e.g., ‘I’, ‘an’, ‘in’, while non-function words usually have three or more (e.g., ‘eye’, ‘Ann’, ‘inn’).

The following is a list of the kind of words considered to be function words with English examples. They are all uninflected in English unless marked otherwise:

  • articles — the and a. In some inflected languages, the articles may take on the case of the declension of the following noun.
  • pronouns — he :: him, she :: her, etc. — inflected in English
  • adpositions — in, under, towards, before, of, for, etc.
  • conjunctions — and and but
  • subordinating conjunctions — if, then, well, however, thus, etc.
  • auxiliary verbs — would, could, should, etc. — inflected in English
  • particles — up, on, down
  • interjections — oh, ah, eh, sometimes called «filled pauses»
  • expletives — take the place of sentences, among other functions.
  • pro-sentences — yes, no, okay, etc.

See also[edit]

  • Content word, words that name objects of reality and their qualities
  • Grammaticalization, process by which words representing objects and actions transform to become grammatical markers

References[edit]

  1. ^ Rudolf Carnap, The Logical Syntax of Language, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1937, pp. 13–14.
  2. ^ Klammer, Thomas, Muriel R. Schulz and Angela Della Volpe. (2009). Analyzing English Grammar (6th ed).Longman.
  3. ^ Fries, Charles Carpenter (1952). The Structure of English. New York: Harcourt Brace.
  4. ^ Westphal, E.O.J. (1971), «The click languages of Southern and Eastern Africa», in Sebeok, T.A. (ed.), Current trends in Linguistics, Vol. 7: Linguistics in Sub-Saharan Africa, Berlin: Mouton

Further reading[edit]

  • Kordić, Snježana (2001). Wörter im Grenzbereich von Lexikon und Grammatik im Serbokroatischen [Serbo-Croatian Words on the Border Between Lexicon and Grammar]. Studies in Slavic Linguistics ; 18 (in German). Munich: Lincom Europa. p. 280. ISBN 3-89586-954-6. LCCN 2005530313. OCLC 47905097. OL 2863539W. CROSBI 426497. Summary.

External links[edit]

  • Short list of 225 English function words

В английском языке существуют правила, которые встречаются крайне редко. И даже если иногда кажется, что все темы уже давно пройдены, спешим вас обрадовать, — у нас еще есть, чем удивить. В данной статье мы рассмотрим один из таких примеров, а именно разницу между content (самостоятельные) и function (служебные) words.

Кроме того, что все английские слова делятся на 8 частей речи, они также относятся к одной из перечисленных групп: content или function. Прежде чем детально рассмотреть каждую из них, предлагаем сперва разобраться, что же они значат.

Content Words = информация или значение

Function Words = слова, необходимые для грамматического построения предложений

Иными словами, content words дают нам важную пояснительную информацию о словах в предложении, а function — связывают эти слова в предложении между собой.

Виды знаменательных слов или content word types

Самостоятельные слова чаще всего выступают в роли существительного, глагола, прилагательного или наречия. Самостоятельное слово в качестве существительного указывает на объект, а глагола — на происходящее действие или состояние.  Прилагательные же дают нам информацию о предмете, в то время как наречия говорят о том, как, где и когда было совершено действие. При этом, все перечисленные части речи в качестве самостоятельных слов предоставляют необходимые для понимания ситуации данные.

Имя существительное = человек, предмет или место

Глагол = действие или состояние

Имя прилагательное = описание предмета, человека, места или объекта

Наречие = описание предмета, человека, места или объекта

Например:

Building — здание (имя существительное, указывает на объект).

Phoebe — Фиби (имя собственное, указывает на человека).

River — река (имя существительное, указывает на объект).

Science — наука (имя существительное, указывает на объект).

Box — коробка (имя существительное, указывает на предмет).

Smile — улыбаться (глагол, указывает на действие).

Buy — покупать (глагол, указывает на действие).

Learn — учить (глагол, указывает на действие).

Take care about — заботиться (глагол, указывает на действие).

Trust — доверять (глагол, указывает на состояние).

Light — светлый (имя прилагательное, описывает предмет).

Difficult — сложный (имя прилагательное, описывает действие/ситуацию).

Kind — добрый (имя прилагательное, описывает человека).

Chip — светлый (имя прилагательное, описывает предмет).

Tender — мягкий (имя прилагательное, описывает предмет).

Slow — медленный (имя прилагательное, описывает действие/ситуацию).

Quickly — быстро (наречие; описывает действие).

Carefully — осторожно (наречие; описывает действие).

Often — часто (наречие; описывает действие).

Slowly — медленно (наречие; описывает действие).

Кроме всех перечисленных выше частей речи, самостоятельные слова также могут выступать в роли:

  • Отрицательных частиц/слов: no, not и never.
  • Указательных местоимений: this, that, these и those.
  • Вопросительных слов: what, where, when, how and why.

Виды функциональных слов или function word types

Функциональные слова соединяют слова в предложении. Функциональными словами могут быть вспомогательные глаголы, предлоги, артикли, союзы и местоимения. Вспомогательные глаголы указывают на время (например: Present Simple, Past Perfect и т. д.), предлоги — на пространственно-временные отношения слов в предложении. Артикли говорят о числе и конкретике, а местоимения указываю на существительное (объект, человека).

К вспомогательным глаголам относятся все формы do, have, be.

Артикли: a/an, the.

Например:

In — в (предлог, указывает на пространственно-временные отношения).

At — в/на (предлог, указывает на пространственно-временные отношения).

Between — между (предлог, указывает на пространственно-временные отношения).

Under — под (предлог, указывает на пространственно-временные отношения).

And — и (союз).

But — но (союз).

So — так (союз).

As — как, согласно (союз).

Since — с тех пор, как (союз).

Ours — наш (местоимение).

I — я (местоимение).

We — мы (местоимение).

Him — его (местоимение).

Знать о существовании самостоятельных и функциональных слов важно не только для общего развития, но и потому что первые всегда выделяются во время разговора (ударение). Функциональные же слова не выделяются интонационно. Таким образом, изучив эту статью вы значительно улучшите свои коммуникационные навыки и станете еще ближе к чистой британской речи.

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A function word is a linguistic word whose referent is (largely) a natural language grammar function.

  • AKA: Grammatical/Empty/Functor/Closed Class Word, Function Lexeme.
  • Context:
    • It can (typically) be a member of a Function Word Set.
    • It can range from being a Function Word Mention to being a Function Word Record.
    • It can Denote a Semantic Relation. (above? not?)
    • It can (typically) be of the following Part-of-Speech Role:
      • a Pronoun Word (a Grammatical Noun).
      • a Conjunction Word;
      • a Preposition Word;
      • an Auxiliary Verb (a Grammatical Verb).
      •  ?? an Interjection Word;
      • a Determiner Word, such as an Article Word;
      • an Adverbial Particle
      • a Subordinator
      •  ?? a Numeral Word
      • a Wh-Word.
      • an Existential There.
      • a Negation Word.
      • an Infinitive Marker.
    • It can (often) be a member of a Stopword List.
    • It can (typically) not Denote an Entity.
    •  ?? It can(not?) be a Free Morpheme(??).
  • Example(s):
    • the” and “a”, and all other Determiners / Articles.
    • to”, “on”, “with”, “by”, “in”, and all other Prepositions.
    • and”, “but”, and all other Conjunction Words.
    • I”, “you”, “me”, and all other Pronouns.
    • must”, “could”, “shall”, and all other Auxiliary Verbs.
  • Counter-Example(s):
    • a Content Word, because its referent is outside the grammar.
    • a Morphosyntactic Word, because it is an abstract entity (with word properties).
  • See: Natural Language Grammar, Grammatical Operation, Transition Word, Pro-Sentence.


References

2016

  • (Wikipedia, 2016) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/function_word Retrieved:2016-5-23.
    • The distinction between function/structure words and content/lexical words proposed by C.C. Fries in 1952 has been highly influential in the grammar used in second language acquisition and English Language teaching. 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. Words that are not function words are called content words (or open class words or lexical words or autosemantic 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). See neologism. Each function word either gives some grammatical information on other words in a sentence or clause, 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. For example, in some of the 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 voiced th-«voiced dental fricative” (see Pronunciation of English th); English function words may have less than three letters ‘I’, ‘an’, ‘in’ while non-function words usually have three or more ‘eye’, ‘Ann’, ‘inn’ (see three letter rule).

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

      • articles — the and a. In some inflected languages, the articles may take on the case of the declension of the following noun.
      • pronouns — inflected in English, as hehim, sheher, etc.
      • adpositions — 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.

2009

  • (WordNet, 2009) ⇒ http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=function%20word
    • S: (n) function word, closed-class word (a word that is uninflected and serves a grammatical function but has little identifiable meaning)

2008

  • (Crystal, 2008) ⇒ David Crystal. (2008). “A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, 6th edition.» Blackwell Publishing.
    • QUOTE: lexis (n.) A term used in LINGUISTIC to refer to the vocabulary of a LANGUAGE … A UNIT of vocabulary is generally referred to as a lexical item , or LEXEME. A complete inventory of the lexical items of a language constitutes that language’s dictionary, or LEXICON … ‘in the lexicon’ as a set of lexical entries . … … Lexis may be seen in contrast with GRAMMAR, as in the distinction between ‘grammatical WORDS’ and lexical words : the former refers to words whose sole function is to signal grammatical relationships (a role which is claimed for such words as of, to and the in English); the latter refers to words which have lexical meaning , i.e. they have semantic CONTENT. Examples include lexical verbs (versus auxiliary verbs) and lexical noun phrases (versus non-lexical NPs, such as PRO). A similar contrast distinguishes lexical morphology from derivational MORPHOLOGY.

2000

  • (Bauer, 2000) ⇒ Laurie Bauer. (2000). “Word.” In: «Morphology.», edited by Geert Booij, Christian Lehmann, and Joachim Mugdan. ISBN:9783110111286
    • QUOTE: The terms grammatical word or (because of the ambiguity of «grammatical word«, which can also be opposed to «lexical» or «content word», see 2.3 and Art. 27). morphosyntactic word are now widely used in this sense (Lyons 1968: 196; 1977: 73; Bauer 1988: 244).

1998

  • (Carter, 1998) ⇒ Ronald Carter. (1998). “Vocabulary: Applied Linguistic Perspectives; 2nd edition.» Routledge.
    • QUOTE: An important question which also arises her concerns our own metalanguage in this book. Should we talk of words or word-forms or lexemes or lexical items? It is clear that the uses of these words word or vocabulary have a general common-sense validity and are serviceable when there is no real need to be precise. They will continue to be used for general reference. The terms lexeme and the word-forms of a lexeme are valuable theoretical concepts and will be used when theoretical distinctions are necessary. Lexical item(s) (or sometimes vocabulary items or simply items) is a useful and fairly neutral hold-all term which captures and, to some extend, helps to overcome instability in the term word, especially when it become limited by orthography. … One distinction which the above discussion clearly necessitates is that between grammatical words and lexical words. The former comprises a small and finite class of words which includes pronouns (I, you, me), articles (the, a), auxiliary verbs (must, could, shall), prepositions (in, on, with, by) and conjunctions (and, but). “Grammatical words like this are also variously known as ‘functional words’, ‘functors’, ’empty words’. Lexical words, on the other hand — which are also variously known as ‘full words’ or ‘content words’ — include nouns (man, cat), adjectives (large, beautiful), verbs (find, wish) and adverbs (brightly, luckily). They carry a higher information content and, as we have seen, are syntactically structure by the grammatical words. Also, while there are a finite number of grammatical words, there is a potentially unlimited number of lexical words. .. But grammatical words remain generally more immutable. This gives some obvious ground, therefore, for linguists to be able to refer to lexical words as an open class of words while grammatical words constitute a closed class. … Finally, we should note that the term word has occurred again. Here it is used informally but also because lexical ‘word’ and grammatical ‘word’ are key terms and are extensively employed in the literature. But they are reproduced here with an awareness of the theoretical importance of the notion of lexeme. In fact, the distinction drawn above between lexemes and word-forms enables an important theoretical point to be made concerning grammatical and lexical ‘words’: there is a regular co-occurrence between a grammatical words and its lexeme; but lexical words take on many different forms. For example, different lexical word-forms ‘sing’, ‘sang’, ‘signs’, ‘singing’, ‘sung’, are realized by a single lexeme SING. But a grammatical word will normally have a single word-form realized by a lexeme. Thus, the lexemes BY and OF have ‘by’ and ‘of’ as their word-forms.

  • #1

What function does «like» have in the structure «noun-like noun»? For instance, «It is a statesmanship-like judgment.»

    • #2

    If you’re wondering what part of speech, I guess you would call it (the whole thing — «statemanship-like») an adjective because it answers the question «

    what kind

    of judgement». When you add «-like» to a word, it means that the person is behaving or acting like someone else would; in this sentence, whoever made the judgement made it thinking as a statesman would. If you say someone is «lady-like» — she is acting in a very refined way, like a lady. It can refer to anything (teacher-like, judge-like, priest-like, etc.) I don’t know if that answers your question.

    Matching Mole


    • #3

    It’s a suffix which creates an adjective from a noun (or possibly another adjective), indicating «likeness» to the quality expressed in the noun. «Noun-like» means to possess the quality of a noun. Statesmanship-like means to possess the qualities of statesmanship: a judgement that is like that which might be made by a statesman. I don’t know whether there is a more specific linguistic term for it. It is somewhat like the suffix «-ly» in words like scholarly (which is itself derived from the word as is «like»).

    • #4

    Thanks for your answers. I’m dealing with capitalization in titles and following the Chicago Manual of Style, which, in the case of hyphenated compounds, says that one should «capitalize any subsequent elements unless they are articles, prepositions, coordinating conjunctions (and, but, for, or, nor).» I was thinking whether «-like» functions as a preposition or not.

    Cagey

    post mod (English Only / Latin)


    • #5

    I think -like is part of the preceding word. It has converted a noun to an adjective. You wouldn’t give it its own capital letter.

    Matching Mole


    • #6

    I don’t think it is in any sense a preposition, but I would include it in the list of elements not to capitalize, and I think to capitalize it would look odd. It is very much a part of the word and as a function word, I think «-like» belongs with the other function words in that list.

    • #7

    Ok, thank you very much.

    Cheers

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    PRONUNCIATION OF FUNCTION WORD

    GRAMMATICAL CATEGORY OF FUNCTION WORD

    Function word is a noun.

    A noun is a type of word the meaning of which determines reality. Nouns provide the names for all things: people, objects, sensations, feelings, etc.

    WHAT DOES FUNCTION WORD MEAN IN ENGLISH?

    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».

    Synonyms and antonyms of function word in the English dictionary of synonyms

    Translation of «function word» into 25 languages

    online translator

    TRANSLATION OF FUNCTION WORD

    Find out the translation of function word to 25 languages with our English multilingual translator.

    The translations of function word from English to other languages presented in this section have been obtained through automatic statistical translation; where the essential translation unit is the word «function word» in English.

    Translator English — Chinese


    虚词

    1,325 millions of speakers

    Translator English — Spanish


    palabra función

    570 millions of speakers

    Translator English — Hindi


    समारोह शब्द

    380 millions of speakers

    Translator English — Arabic


    وظيفة الكلمة

    280 millions of speakers

    Translator English — Russian


    функция слово

    278 millions of speakers

    Translator English — Portuguese


    palavra função

    270 millions of speakers

    Translator English — Bengali


    ফাংশন শব্দ

    260 millions of speakers

    Translator English — French


    mot de fonction

    220 millions of speakers

    Translator English — Malay


    Fungsi perkataan

    190 millions of speakers

    Translator English — German


    Funktionswort

    180 millions of speakers

    Translator English — Japanese


    機能語

    130 millions of speakers

    Translator English — Korean


    기능 단어

    85 millions of speakers

    Translator English — Javanese


    Fungsi tembung

    85 millions of speakers

    Translator English — Vietnamese


    chức năng từ

    80 millions of speakers

    Translator English — Tamil


    செயல்பாடு சொல்

    75 millions of speakers

    Translator English — Marathi


    कार्य शब्द

    75 millions of speakers

    Translator English — Turkish


    İşlev kelimesi

    70 millions of speakers

    Translator English — Italian


    funzione di parola

    65 millions of speakers

    Translator English — Polish


    funkcja słowo

    50 millions of speakers

    Translator English — Ukrainian


    функція слово

    40 millions of speakers

    Translator English — Romanian


    Funcția cuvânt

    30 millions of speakers

    Translator English — Greek


    λέξη λειτουργία

    15 millions of speakers

    Translator English — Afrikaans


    funksie woord

    14 millions of speakers

    Translator English — Swedish


    funktion ord

    10 millions of speakers

    Translator English — Norwegian


    funksjon ordet

    5 millions of speakers

    Trends of use of function word

    TENDENCIES OF USE OF THE TERM «FUNCTION WORD»

    The term «function word» is normally little used and occupies the 135.237 position in our list of most widely used terms in the English dictionary.

    Trends

    The map shown above gives the frequency of use of the term «function word» in the different countries.

    Principal search tendencies and common uses of function word

    List of principal searches undertaken by users to access our English online dictionary and most widely used expressions with the word «function word».

    FREQUENCY OF USE OF THE TERM «FUNCTION WORD» OVER TIME

    The graph expresses the annual evolution of the frequency of use of the word «function word» during the past 500 years. Its implementation is based on analysing how often the term «function word» appears in digitalised printed sources in English between the year 1500 and the present day.

    Examples of use in the English literature, quotes and news about function word

    10 ENGLISH BOOKS RELATING TO «FUNCTION WORD»

    Discover the use of function word in the following bibliographical selection. Books relating to function word and brief extracts from same to provide context of its use in English literature.

    1

    Readings in Speech Recognition

    As with other context-dependent units, we use deleted interpolation to combine
    the function- word-dependent parameters with context-independent ones. Table
    6 shows the phones in are and be, the counts for the distributions of each phone,
     …

    Alex Waibel, Kai-Fu Lee, 1990

    2

    Computational Models of American Speech

    TABLE 3.2 Rules Specifying Function Word Contexts («h» NIL (:function-word)) ;»
    his» («d» NIL (:function- word (:following vowel «n»))) ;» should, did, and, around» (»
    u» «l» (:function- word (:following «t»))) ; «to, you» («u» «i» (:function-word (:following …

    Mary Margaret Withgott, Francine R. Chen, 1993

    3

    Clinical Linguistics: Theory and Applications in Speech …

    7.2 Phonological word contexts, and stalling and advancing fluency failures
    Function word position relative to a content word needs to be established
    objectively to assess the stalling role of function word repetitions. The reason this
    is …

    4

    Language Change: The Interplay of Internal, External, and …

    So for example, in the English-Spanish data, utterances containing the function
    word mas ‘more’ were considered separately from utterances containing the
    function word dos ‘two’ because the child did have the English word more in her …

    Mari C. Jones, Edith Esch, 2002

    5

    Computational Linguistics and Talking Robots: Processing …

    For a representation of content it does not matter whether a certain semantic
    value such as definiteness is coded by means of a function word, as in English,
    or by means of a suffix, as in Romanian.6 Function words of English are
    determiners …

    6

    Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary: Eleventh Edition

    12c) 1 a (1) — used as a function word to introduce a noun clause that is usu. the
    subject or object of a verb or a predicate nominative <said -~— he was afraid) (2)
    — used as a function word to introduce a subordinate clause that is anticipated …

    7

    Linguistics for Everyone: An Introduction

    Though sometimes the difference between content and function word classes
    can be rather fuzzy, there is a great deal of evidence that this basic distinction
    exists and that this distinction among classes of words is part of our fundamental
     …

    Kristin Denham, Anne Lobeck, 2009

    8

    Recovery from Stuttering

    Absolute Activation Threshold Time FIGURE 12.2 Activation and decay
    parameters for the situation leading to stalling for a PW consisting of a function
    word preceding a content word. The solid lines represent the activation states for
    the …

    9

    Language: Its Structure and Use

    In Tongan, the function word ʔoku denotes present tense, while naʔe denotes
    past tense. ʔoku ʔalu e fineʔeiki ki kolo Present go the woman to town ‘The
    woman is going to town.’ naʔe ʔalu e fineʔeiki ki kolo Past go the woman to
    town …

    10

    Formal Approaches to Function in Grammar: In honor of Eloise …

    The lines are fairly typical of the entire text, in which nearly 81% of all discourse
    units begin with a function word, rather than a content word. The overall
    preference is heavily skewed in favor of multiple function words in the utterance
    initial …

    Andrew Carnie, Heidi Harley, MaryAnn Willie, 2003

    10 NEWS ITEMS WHICH INCLUDE THE TERM «FUNCTION WORD»

    Find out what the national and international press are talking about and how the term function word is used in the context of the following news items.

    I’m black, I’m Christian, and I don’t forgive you

    The Meriam-Webster dictionary defines «unto» as «a function word to indicate reference or concern.» If «unto» implies reciprocity, then we have … «The News-Press, Jul 15»

    How much you say “the” can predict how well you’ll do in college

    Other function word types such as pronouns, conjunctions and adverbs, more dynamic word choices found in personal narratives, are … «Vox, Jan 15»

    People who use the same kinds of function words are more likely to …

    When analyzed, researchers discovered a positive correlation of function-word similarity with speed-daters’ odds of going on a second date … «Medical Xpress, Feb 14»

    Sagmeister & Walsh shift Function up a gear

    “We started with the Function word mark..[and] using the exact elements that went into constructing the Function typography, created a series of … «Creative Review, Dec 13»

    Box Notes puts shared folder users on same page

    Notes isn’t anything like a full-function word processor — it’s a really simple online editor. What it lacks in formatting capabilities it makes up for … «Diginomica, Sep 13»

    8 symbols that we turned into words

    … a rare bird sighting in the world of linguistics: An innovation in the slang of young people embedding itself as a function word in the language. «The Week Magazine, May 13»

    ‘A Rare Bird Sighting’: ‘Slash’ As A New Conjunction

    … a rare-bird sighting in the world of linguistics: an innovation in the slang of young people embedding itself as a function word in the language. «NPR, Apr 13»

    Review: Page Four provides the tools writers need, without distractions

    PageFour tries to find the sweet spot between that style and a full-function word processor. One of the more unique features of PageFour is a … «PCWorld, Mar 13»

    Health bites

    In English, a function word comes before a content word (the dog, his hat, with friends, for example) and the duration of the content word is … «South China Morning Post, Feb 13»

    How Bilingual Babies Keep Languages Separate

    In Japanese or Hindi, by contrast, the content word («dog») comes first, and has a higher pitch than the function word («the»). In most languages … «LiveScience.com, Feb 13»

    REFERENCE

    « EDUCALINGO. Function word [online]. Available <https://educalingo.com/en/dic-en/function-word>. Apr 2023 ».

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  • Is likable a word
  • Is lightweight one word
  • Is online spelled as one word
  • Is lighted a proper word
  • Is one way a compound word