FUNCTION WORD Definition & Meaning

function word

noun

a word, as a preposition, article, auxiliary, or pronoun, that chiefly expresses grammatical relationships, has little semantic content of its own, and belongs to a small, closed class of words whose membership is relatively fixed ( content word ).

function word

noun

grammar a word, such as the , with a particular grammatical role but little identifiable meaning Compare content word grammatical meaning

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�y��vlog History and Origins

Origin of function word¹

First recorded in 1935–40

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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

The classic stylometric technique, begun in the late 1980s, was to tabulate the relative frequency of “function words” — words like “by” and “you” and “from” — and then to compare their numbers across manuscripts.

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Rather than just vocabulary, the duo homed in on subtle characteristics like the frequency of “function words”—such as “the,” “that,” and “of”—which serve to create relationships between the other words in a sentence.

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The latest edition of the “New Oxford Shakespeare” has claimed that 17 of the bard’s 44 plays were produced collaboratively, based on an analysis of how his contemporaries used “function words” like “and” or “with”.

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Prof Pennebaker studied 86 couples and found partners using similar frequencies of function words - articles, conjunctions, and pronouns - were most likely still to be together after three months.

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He focuses not on content but style, and has found, for example, that the use of function words in a college admissions essay can predict grades.

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