FUNCTION

WORDS
Done by:
Akhunbaeva Nelli (FA-1-22)
 WHAT ARE FUNCTION
WORDS?
Function words are words that do not
carry meaning on their own but serve a
grammatical purpose in a sentence. They
help structure sentences and show
relationships between words. Without
function words, language would be
unclear and difficult to understand.
 MAIN CATEGORIES OF
FUNCTION WORDS
PREPOSITIONS CONJUNCTIONS ARTICLES

PRONOUNS AUXILIARY VERBS

MODALS DETERMINERS QUANTIFIERS

 1.PREPOSITIONS
Prepositions begin prepositional Prepositions: in, of, between, on,
phrases, which contain nouns and with, by, at, without, through, over,
other modifiers. Prepositions across, around, into, within
function to give more information
about nouns. In the phrase "the river
that flows through the woods." The EXAMPLE:
prepositional phrase is "through the
The book is on the table.
woods," and the preposition is
"through."
 ARTICLES

An article is a type of • Definite article: the (The

determiner that defines a sun is bright today.)
noun as specific or • Indefinite articles: a, an
general. (She adopted a cat.)
 CONJUNCTIONS
Types:
Conjunctions connect parts
• Coordinating: and, but, or, so
of a sentence— items in a list,
(I like tea and coffee.)
two separate sentences, or
• Subordinating: because,
clauses and phrases to a
although, while (I stayed home
sentence, for example. In the
because it rained.)
previous sentence, the
• Correlative: either…or,
conjunctions are or and and.
neither…nor (Either you study,
or you fail.)
 PRONOUNS
Pronouns are words that stand in
for nouns. Their antecedent
needs to be clear, or your reader
will be confused. Take "It's so Pronouns: she, they, he, it,
difficult" as an example. Without him, her, you, me, anybody,
context, the reader has no idea
somebody, someone,
anyone
what "it" refers to. In context, "Oh
• Example sentence: Tom is
my gosh, this grammar lesson," he
my friend. He is very kind.
said. "It's so difficult," the reader
easily knows that it refers to the
lesson, which is its noun
antecedent.
 AUXILIARY VERBS
Auxiliary verbs are also
called helping verbs. They
pair with a main verb to Auxiliary verbs: be, is,
change tense, such as when am, are, have, has, do,
you want to express does, did, get, got,
something in present was, were
continuous tense (I am Example sentence: She
walking), past perfect tense is studying for her exam
(I had walked), or future
tense (I am going to walk
there).
 MODALS
Modal verbs express
condition or possibility. It's
Modals: may, might, can,
not certain that something could, will, would, shall,
is going to happen, but it should.
might. For example, in "If I Example sentence: You
must finish your work on
could have gone with you,
time.
I would have," modal
verbs include could and
would.
 DETERMINERS

Determiners are words such as articles

(the, a), possessive pronouns (their, Examples: this, that,
your), quantifiers (much), some, any, each,
demonstratives (that, those), and every, many
numbers. They function as adjectives to • Example sentence:
modify nouns and go in front of a noun
Every student passed the
to show the reader whether the noun is
specific or general, such as in "that coat" test.
(specific) vs. "a coat" (general).
 QUANTIFIERS
Quantifiers are used to
indicate the quantity of
something. Which quantifier Much of, many of, few of, a
you use depends on whether little of, plenty of, lots of,
the noun is singular or plural, some of, a number of, none
and countable or uncountable. of, several of, etc.
It also depends on whether
the sentence is positive or
negative.
WHY ARE FUNCTION WORDS IMPORTANT?
• They create sentence structure and
logical connections.
• They help express relationships
between words and ideas.
• They give clarity and fluency to
spoken and written language.
WHY ARE FUNCTION WORDS IMPORTANT?

Function words make up about

50% of the most commonly used
words in English. Even though
they don’t carry meaning alone,
sentences wouldn’t make sense
without them!