Put the word function in a sentence

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.

‘Form’ and ‘function’ are two extremely important concepts that you need to know about to fully understand how grammar works. Surprisingly, there is no overt reference to these terms in the UK National Curriculum.

‘Form’ refers to the category labels we use for the building blocks of grammar, i.e. word classes, phrases, and clauses. Consider the following sentence:

• My daughter bought a completely useless smartphone over the summer.

Scanning this sentence from left to right we can label each individual word as follows:

• my: determiner
• daughter: noun
• bought: verb
• a: determiner
• completely: adverb
• new: adjective
• smartphone: noun
• over: preposition
• the: determiner
• summer: noun

All the word class labels above are referred to as grammatical form labels. Still talking about form, we can also say that:

• my daughter is a noun phrase
• a completely useless smartphone is also a noun phrase
• over the summer is a preposition phrase

The terms ‘noun phrase’, ‘preposition phrase’, etc. are also grammatical form labels.

Digging deeper into the phrases a completely useless smartphone and over the summer we can also say that:

• completely useless is an adjective phrase within the larger noun phrase a completely useless smartphone
• with the preposition phrase over the summer we have an embedded noun phrase, namely the summer

(In some grammars we also have verb phrases such that bought on its own forms a verb phrase or, if the direct object is included in the verb phrase, bought a new smartphone. The National Curriculum doesn’t recognise verb phrases as such. Instead verbs are regarded as the Heads of clauses. For some further explanation, look here.)

In summary, when we are talking about form, we are talking about structure. We can visualise structure using what linguists call tree diagrams. For a completely useless smartphone the tree looks like this:

We are also taking about form when we have subordination in a phrase or clause. So, in the following example the string that she lives in Leicester is a subordinate clause:

• I know that she lives in Leicester.

‘Subordinate clause’ is a further example of a grammatical form label.

There’s more to say about form, but for now this will do.

What about ‘function’? It is important to be aware that this label is actually ambiguous: it can have a general sense and a grammatical sense. These are often confused.

Let’s look at the general sense first. Consider the utterance below:

• Fortunately, the pain went away very quickly.

The word fortunately in this sentence is an adverb that has a pragmatic function: it signals that the speaker views what follows (namely the pain going away quickly) as a good thing.

Very in the adverb phrase very quickly is also an adverb which functions in a general sense to ‘intensify’ the meaning of the adverb quickly. So from a general functional point of view we can say that this word is an intensifier. This can be called a semantic function.

Turning now to the grammatical sense of ‘function’ (which is actually best referred to as ‘grammatical function’), we need to say different things about the sentence above.

Taking the word fortunately again, this time we say that its grammatical function is Adverbial.  Words and phrases that have the grammatical function of Adverbial modify a particular unit in a sentence. In this case fortunately modifies an entire clause. In the example sentence very quickly also has the grammatical function of Adverbial, but in this case it modifies the verb go. More specifically, it expresses the manner in which the pain went away. Adverbials can also express other meanings, e.g. location and time, as in these examples:

• We had a picnic in the park (preposition phrase functioning as Adverbial)
• They left Hong Kong last week (noun phrase functioning as Adverbial)

Apart from Adverbial, other familiar grammatical function labels are Subject, Object and Complement (which includes Subject complement and Object complement).

The conclusion from all this is that we need to be careful when we use the word ‘function’ when talking about language and grammar. It’s important to make clear whether we are talking about general functions, such as ‘disapproving’, ‘commenting’, ‘intensifying’, and the like, or about grammatical functions, such as Subject, Object and Adverbial.

See also: Form and function (2), Adverb and adverbial

There are four main sentence functions in the English language: declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamative.

When we describe a sentence based on its function, we are talking about its purpose. If you want to identify the functions in a sentence, just ask yourself, ‘What is the point of this sentence? What is it trying to do?‘ This article will explore the definition and examples of sentence functions.

How wonderful! (That’s an exclamative sentence)

Read on to find out more. (And that’s an imperative sentence)

We use declarative sentences every day — in informal writing, formal writing, poetry, literature, daily speech, advertising — just about everywhere!

Fig 1. Example of declarative sentence

Interrogative

Interrogative sentences are used to ask questions and typically require an answer. There are a few different types of interrogative sentences:

• Yes/No interrogatives.

• Alternative interrogatives.

• WH interrogatives.

• Negative interrogatives.

• Tag questions.

Interrogative sentences usually begin with a WH question word (who, what, where, when, why, and how) or an auxiliary verb (are, do, can, may, etc.), and always end with a question mark (?).

Interrogatives that start with a subject are usually tag questions and are commonly used in colloquial speech. For example, ‘Butterflies are insects, aren’t they?‘, Or, more informally: ‘Butterflies are insects, right?‘

Imperative

Imperative sentences are mainly used to give a command or make a demand and can be presented in several ways.

Fig 2. Imperative sentence

Exclamative

Exclamative sentences are used to express strong feelings and opinions, such as surprise, excitement, and anger. Exclamative sentences must contain the words What or How and usually end with an exclamation mark (!).

Not all sentences that end with an exclamation mark are exclamative sentences. Sentences that do not contain the words What or How are simply different sentence functions driven by emotion and given an exclamation mark to highlight that emotion; we call these exclamations. Declarative sentences made with emotion and ending with exclamation marks are called exclamatory sentences.

Sentence functions and sentence structures, what’s the difference?

What is the difference between a sentence function and a sentence structure? Sentences can be defined in two ways: by their purpose and by their structure. Be careful not to confuse sentence functions with sentence structures!

Sentence structures are how we form sentences, such as simple sentences, compound sentences, complex sentences, and compound-complex sentences.

Let’s break down some sentences based on their function and their structure to highlight the differences.

‘Before you come in, take off your shoes.‘

The girl in the painting is playing the guitar. (play) 

I My dog’s not dangerous. He does not bite

2 Why are you wearing  sunglasses? It is raining ! (wear. rain) 

3 You can turn off the radio. I am not listening to it. (not listen) 

4 I need to go to the bank. I don’t have any money. (need, not have) 

5 Be careful! The baby is putting that pen in her mouth! (put) 

6 A:Do you usually cook at weekends? (cook) 

B: No, we normally eat out. (eat) 

7 A: What are you doing here? (do) 

B: I am waiting for Emma. She’s late, as usual. (wait) 

8 I usually drink tea, but I want a coffee roday. (want) 

9 My sister works from 9.00 to 5.00. She’s a secretary. (work) 

10 We live in Paris, but we are staying in Nice at the moment. 

(I ive, stay)