Jul 4, 2007 10:33
17 yrs ago
7 viewers *
English term

Functional words

Non-PRO English Art/Literary Linguistics
Linguistically what name is given to words like "just" (when used in the way it's used in the examples)? ie when it's not a "content word".

Is it "functional"?

"Just listen to me"; "Just help yourself" (ie. used in orders to get sb's attention, to make a statement or order stronger)

Discussion

Cervin Jul 4, 2007:
Also called form word, functor.
Cervin Jul 4, 2007:
This might help, taken from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Function words
function word
A word, such as a preposition, a conjunction, or an article, that has little semantic content of its own and chiefly indicates a grammatical relationship.
Peter Shortall Jul 4, 2007:

Responses

+2
3 hrs
Selected

content words & function words

I understand that, in your example, “just” is an adverb, synonym with ‘only’ and ‘merely’; and adverbs are classified as *content words*, not as *function words*, as you can see in the following references, as well as at the link provided by Peter.

Hope this will of some help,
Manuel
==========

just
adverb.
1. and nothing more; "I was merely asking"; "it is simply a matter of time"; "just a scratch"; "he was only a child"; "hopes that last but a moment" [syn: merely]
WordNet® 3.0, © 2006 by Princeton University.
<http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=just&r=66>
<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/merely>
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(…) For instance, Read (2001) describes the different considerations involved in measuring lexical richness. It is important to understand how a ”word‘ is defined. The first key distinction is between **”function‘ or ”grammatical‘ words such as and, a, to, and this (articles, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, auxiliaries etc)** and **”content‘ words such as nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs**. Taking the age old example:
<http://www.coe.int/T/DG4/Portfolio/documents/CEF ref supp Se...
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Content items are nouns, full lexical verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Function items are determiners (articles and quantifiers), pronouns, prepositions, numerals, conjunctions, interjections, negative particles, and auxiliary and modal verbs.
(…)
Determiners (articles and quantifiers), prepositions, pronouns, numerals, conjunctions, interjections, existential “there”, the infinitival marker “to”, negative markers, auxiliary and modal verbs are referred to as “function words” (Sityaev, 2000:294).
<http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/send-pdf.cgi?osu1117225383>)
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<http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/send-pdf.cgi?osu1117225383>
Peer comment(s):

agree Cervin
2 hrs
Thank you, Cervin!
agree Alfa Trans (X)
5 days
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4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Selected automatically based on peer agreement."
25 mins

parts of speech

that's in traditional grammar
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