Write short notes on the following: 1.content words and function words
Answers
In linguistics, content words are words that possess semantic content and contribute to the meaning of the sentence in which they occur. In a traditional approach, nouns were said to name objects and other entities, lexical verbs to indicate actions, adjectives to refer to attributes of entities and adverbs, to attributes of actions. They contrast with function words, which are words that have very little substantive meaning and primarily denote grammatical relationships between content words, such as prepositions (in, out, under, etc.), pronouns (I, you, he, who, etc.), conjunctions (and, but, till, as, etc.), etc.
All words can be classified as either content or function words, although it is not always easy to make the distinction. With only around 150 function words, 99.9% of words in the English language are content words. Although small in numbers, function words are used at a disproportionately higher rate and make up about 50% of any English text. This is due to the conventional patterns of words usage which bind function words to content words almost every time they are used, creating an interdependence between the two word groups.
Content words are usually open class words, meaning new ones are easily added to the language. In relation to English phonology, content words generally adhere to the minimal word constraint of being no shorter than two morae long (i.e., a minimum length of two light syllables or one heavy syllable), while function words often do not. Content words are words that have meaning. Therefore, we refer to content words as an "open" class. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are content parts of speech.
In linguistics, function words (also called functors) are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning and express grammatical relationships among other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker. They signal the structural relationships that words have to one another and are the glue that holds sentences together. Thus they form important elements in the structures of sentences.
Words that are not function words are called content words (or open class words, lexical words, or autosemantic words): these include nouns, most verbs, adjectives, and most adverbs, although some adverbs are function words (e.g., then and why). Dictionaries define the specific meanings of content words, but can only describe the general usages of function words. By contrast, grammars describe the use of function words in detail, but treat lexical words in general terms only.
Since it was first proposed in 1952 by C. C. Fries, this distinguishing of function/structure words from content/lexical words has been highly influential in the grammar used in second language acquisition and English language teaching. Function words are words that exist to explain or create grammatical or structural relationships into which the content words may fit.