| Library / English Dictionary |
FUNCTION WORD
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A word that is uninflected and serves a grammatical function but has little identifiable meaning
Synonyms:
closed-class word; function word
Classified under:
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents
Hypernyms ("function word" is a kind of...):
word (a unit of language that native speakers can identify)
Meronyms (parts of "function word"):
grammatical meaning (the meaning of a word that depends on its role in a sentence; varies with inflectional form)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "function word"):
determinative; determiner (one of a limited class of noun modifiers that determine the referents of noun phrases)
preposition (a function word that combines with a noun or pronoun or noun phrase to form a prepositional phrase that can have an adverbial or adjectival relation to some other word)
pronoun (a function word that is used in place of a noun or noun phrase)
conjunction; conjunctive; connective; continuative (an uninflected function word that serves to conjoin words or phrases or clauses or sentences)
particle (a function word that can be used in English to form phrasal verbs)
