| > > Line 85: | > > What do you mean by "function words"? Is this verbs, or names of | > > functions? | > | > These are words that don't have a "meaning" but only a grammatical | > function, e.g. "if". | | But "if" is a conjunction and does have a meaning in my dictionary.
"Function word" is a standard term in linguistics (and hence in many grammar books) for that kind of words (meaning words are the opposite; these are roughly nouns, verbs, adjectives prepositions (mostly) and adverbs). Function words are defined as indicating the function of a phrase (of meaning words) in a sentence (determiners, conjunctions, ...). "if" and "that" as conjunctions indication that the following sentence is a subordinate sentence. The meaning words don't indicate that function of their own. (As usual in linguistics though, none of these distinctions can be made strict.) Greetings, Frederik
