Function/Content Words
Function Words
-have little meaning on its own and are chiefly
used to indicate a grammatical relationship
•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 be (is, am, are), have, got, do
Content Words
-are words that carry the content or the meaning
of a sentence
-bears reference to the world independent of its
use within a particular sentence
•Nouns John, room, answer
• Adjectives happy, new, large, grey
•Main verbs search, grow, hold, have
•Adverbs really, completely, very, also,
enough
Differences between content and
function words:
Closed Class VS Open Class
The class of function words is closed. Languages
do not easily add new words to this set.
•Closed-class words.
•English has ~300 closed class words.
The class of content words is open.
Words invented in 2012 that won categories at
the Annual Meeting of the conference
American Dialect Society (Content words)
WORD OF THE YEAR
hashtag – a word or phrase preceded by a hash symbol (#), used on Twitter to mark a
topic or make a commentary
MOST USEFUL
-(po)calypse, -(ma)geddon – hyperbolic combining forms for various catastrophes
MOST CREATIVE
gate lice: airline passengers who crowd around a gate waiting to board
MOST UNNECESSARY
amazeballs – slang form for “amazing.”
MOST EUPHEMISTIC
job creator – a member of the top one-percent of moneymakers.
MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED
marriage equality: legal recognition of same-sex marriage
LEAST LIKELY TO SUCCEED
YOLO: acronym for “You Only Live Once,” often used sarcastically or self-deprecatingly
Parts of Speech Review
Noun
•
Adjective
 a word used to name a person,
animal, place, thing, and abstract
idea.
•
modifies a noun or
a pronoun by describing,
identifying, or quantifying
nouns.
•
Adverb
•
modify a verb, an adjective, or
another adverb, and indicates
manner, time, place, cause, or
degree.
Answers questions such as
"how," "when," "where," "how
much".
Pronoun
can replace a noun or another
pronoun.
•
Verb
 express actions, events, or states
of being
Parts of Speech Review
Preposition
links nouns, pronouns and phrases to other words in a sentence.
The word or phrase that the preposition introduces is called
the object of the preposition.
Conjunction
link words, phrases, and clauses to form a complete sentence.
 (FANBOYS)
Interjection
 word added to a sentence to convey emotion. It is not grammatically related
to any other part of the sentence.