There are different types of words which belong to one of the eight parts of speech in English Grammar. Each word is either a content word or a function word based on it’s usage. Let’s learn about what these two types mean:
What are Content Words ?
Free morphemes that make up the main meaning of a sentence are content words. Their parts of speech include nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
Examples of Content Words
Here are some examples of content words from everyday speech.
Nouns:
| Man | State | Ocean | Country |
| Cat | Village | Family | Religion |
| History | House | Bird | Baby |
| Flower | Movie | Ship | Book |
Adjectives:
| Big | Short | Cheap | Large |
| Small | Mean | Fat | Scary |
| Cute | Hungry | Thin | Hairy |
| Tall | Silly | Pretty | Funny |
Verbs:
| Accept | Add | Admit | Advise |
| Ask | Agree | Avoid | Break |
| Choose | Compare | Consider | Contain |
| Drive | Eat | Jump | Write |
What are Function Words ?
Free morphemes also include function words. These words consist of articles, demonstratives, auxiliaries, quantifiers, prepositions, pronouns, and conjunctions.
Examples of Function Words
Here are some examples of free morphemes as function words.
Articles:
| A | An | The |
Demonstratives:
| This | That | These | Those |
Auxiliary Verbs:
| Am | Is | Are | Was |
| Were | Being | Can | Could |
| Do | Does | Did | Doing |
| Have | Has | Had | Having |
| May | Might | Must | Shall |
| Should | Will | Would |
Quantifiers:
| Much | Many | Little | A little |
| Few | A few | Several | A number of |
| Any | Very little | Very few | All |
| Enough | None | Plenty of | Some |
| More | Most | Less | Least |
Prepositions:
| Above | After | Around | At |
| Before | Behind | Between | Beside |
| By | Down | For | From |
| In | Near | Of | On |
| Over | To | Under | Up |
Pronouns:
| I | Me | We | Us |
| Our | He | His | Him |
| She | Her | They | Them |
Conjunctions:
| After | As | As soon as | As if |
| If | Whenever | Though | Even |
| Before | Now | Once | And |
| So | Then | When | Since |
| That | Until | Who | Which |
Conclusion:
Finally, we have learned that content words give us the most important information while function words are used to stitch those words together in a sentence.
Keep exploring EnglishBix for more quality resources on vocabulary and English grammar concepts.
Quick Links