Ministry of higher and secondary specialized

Major Categories of Function Words – 1

1. 

Determiners:

Function words which signal nouns.

They never appear except when followed by a noun and 

invariably signal its coming: a, the, an, possessive pr-ns 

2. 

Auxiliary verbs:

have and be. Modals are subcategories.

3.

Qualifiers:

work with both adj. and adv.: more and most, very, quite, rather, 

less (intensifiers)

Function Words – 2

4.

Prepositions

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5.

Conjunctions:

work as coordination of linguistic forms of syntactic units having 

equal value

6.

Subordinators:

Connect dependent clauses and include words like: because, 

after, as well as relative pronouns

7.

Interrogatives:

Operate in the formation of questions and include words like 

when, where, why, how and so on: as well as – the interrogative 

pronouns which, what, who

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