Inglese per la moda - Function words

Grammar review: English language structure

Part one – function words

Language is made up of words, and words can be divided into two basic groups.

I. Content or lexical words

These words carry meaning and are divided into:

• Nouns – nomi
• Adjectives – aggettivi
• Verbs – verbi
• Adverbs – avverbi
• Numerals – numerali
• Exclamations and yes and no answers – esclamazioni e risposte sì e no

II. Function words

Function words are, as the name suggests, functional to the grammatical structure of the text. They carry little meaning (have no synonyms) and typically “help” another word. Function words are:

• Determiners – determinativo
• Conjunctions – congiunzioni
• Prepositions – preposizioni
• Pronouns – pronomi
• Particles – particelle
• Modal verbs – verbi modali
• Auxiliary verbs – verbi ausiliari

1. Determiners

Determiners are used in front of nouns to indicate whether you are referring to something specific or something of a particular type.

The definite and indefinite articles are all determiners:

• a/an/the

You use a specific determiner when people know exactly which thing(s) or person/people you are talking about. The specific determiners are:

• The definite article: the
• Demonstratives: this, that, these, those
• Possessives: my, your, his, her, its, our, their

You use general determiners to talk about people or things without saying exactly who or what they are. The general determiners are:

• The indefinite articles: a, an

Other indefinite determiners are:

• a few, a little, all, another, any
• both, each, either, enough, every
• few, fewer, less, little, many, more, most, much
• neither, no, other, several, some

2. Conjunctions

A conjunction is a word that "joins" two parts of a sentence. They can be either:

• Coordinating Conjunctions: and, but, or, nor, for, yet, so
• Subordinating Conjunctions: although, because, since, unless

Conjunctions are divided into three parts. Form conjunctions have three basic forms:

• Single Word: and, but, because, although
• Compound (often ending with or as that): provided that, as long as, in order that
• Correlative (surrounding an adverb or adjective): so that. For example: he may know

Function conjunctions have two basic functions or "jobs":

• Coordinating conjunctions: are used to join two parts of a sentence that are grammatically equal. The two parts may be single words or clauses, for example:
• and – Jack and Jill went up the hill.
• but – The water was warm, I didn't go swimming.