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. 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 the
voiced th voiced dental fricative|. English function words may be spelled with fewer than
three letters; e.g., 'I', 'an', 'in', while non-function words usually are spelled with 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. •
co-ordinating conjunctions —
and, or, but, etc. •
subordinating conjunctions —
if,
than, however,
thus, etc. •
auxiliary verbs —
would,
could,
should, etc. — inflected in English •
particles —
up,
on,
down, out, etc. •
interjections —
oh,
ah,
eh, etc. — sometimes called "filled pauses" •
expletives —
indeed, friggin’, zounds, etc. •
sentence words —
yes, no,
okay, etc. == See also ==