VOCABULARY - CONTENT AND FUNCTIONS WORDS

VOCABULARY - CONTENT AND FUNCTIONS WORDS

Content and Function Words 

Each word in English belongs to one of the eight parts of speech. Each word is also either a content word or a function word.

   

Content words

In contrast to function words, content words, or lexical words (including nouns, verbs, adjectives, and most adverbs), are words that carry the content or the meaning of a sentence. They are open-class words. Open classes accept the addition of new morphemes (words), through such processes as compounding, derivation, inflection, coining, and borrowing.

 Function Words

In contrast to content words, function words (also called grammatical 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. Function words are closed-class words. Languages do not easily add new words to this set. They are always relatively few and resistant to change. They are lexically unproductive and are generally invariable in form.

Content Words vs. Function Words

Content = information, meaning
Function = necessary words for grammar
In other words, content words give us the most important information while function words are used to stitch those words together.

Content Word Types

Content words are usually nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. A noun tells us which object, a verb tells us about the action happening, or the state. Adjectives give us details about objects and people and adverbs tell us how, when or where something is done. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs give us important information required for understanding.

Noun = person, place or thing
Verb = action, state
Adjective = describes an object, person, place or thing
Adverb = tells us how, where or when something happens

Examples:

Nouns:

house
computer
student
lake
Peter
science

Verbs:

enjoy
purchase
visit
understand
believe
look forward to

Adjectives:

heavy
difficult
careful
expensive
soft
fast

Adverbs:

slowly
carefully
sometimes
thoughtfully
often
suddenly

Other Content Words

While nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are the most important content words, there are a few other words that are also key to understanding.

These include negatives like no, not and never; demonstrative pronouns including this, that, these and those; and question words like what, where, when, how and why.

Function Word Types

Function words help us connect important information. Function words are important for understanding, but they add little meaning beyond defining the relationship between two words.

Function words include auxiliary verbs, prepositions, articles, conjunctions, and pronouns. Auxiliary verbs are used to establish the tense, prepositions show relationships in time and space, articles show us something that is specific or one of many, and pronouns refer to other nouns.

Auxiliary verbs = do, be, have (help with conjugation of tense)
Prepositions = show relationships in time and space
Articles = used to indicate specific or non-specific nouns
Conjunctions = words that connect
Pronouns = refer to other nouns

Examples:

Auxiliary Verbs:

do
has
will
is
has been
did

Prepositions:

in
at
through
over
between
under

Articles:

a
an
the

Conjunctions:

and
but
for
so
since
as

Pronouns:

I
you
him
us
ours
she

 Knowing the difference between content and functions words is important because content words are stressed in conversation in English. Function words are non-stressed. In other words, function words are not emphasized in speech, while content words are highlighted. Knowing the difference between content and function words can help you in understanding, and, most importantly, in pronunciation skills.