A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics David Crystal

Syntactic functions (interpreted semantically) and pragmatic functions are then
assigned to elements of predication, and expressed in sentences through the
use of ‘expression rules’ (which deal with such matters as case, agreement,
order and intonation).
functional linguistics see function (1)
fundamental frequency 203
functional literacy
see literacy
functional load see function (2)
functional phonetics see function (1)
functional projection
see functional category
functional role
see semantic role
functional sentence perspective (FSP) A theory of linguistic analysis associated
with the modern exponents of the Prague School of linguistics. It refers to an
analysis of utterances (or texts) in terms of the information they contain,
the role of each utterance part being evaluated for its semantic contribution
to the whole. The notion of ‘communicative dynamism’ has been developed
as an attempt to rate these different levels of contribution within a structure,
particularly with reference to the concepts of rheme and theme.
functional shift
see conversion
functional structure
see f-structure
functional yield see function (2)
function word A term sometimes used in word classification for a word whose
role is largely or wholly grammatical, e.g. articles, pronouns, conjunctions.
Several such terms exist for this notion (e.g. form word, grammatical word,
functor, empty word); all contrast with the lexical words in a language,
which carry the main semantic content.
functor (n.) (1) A term sometimes used in word classification for words and
bound morphemes whose role in language is largely or wholly grammatical,
such as prepositions, articles, pronouns, conjunctions. Several such terms
relate to this notion (e.g. function word, grammatical word, form word,
empty word); all contrast with the lexical words in a language, which carry
the main semantic content.
(2) In formalized analyses, a functor is an expression which denotes a
function. In categorial grammar, it is the syntactic category of such
an expression, generally represented by a pair of category labels separated by
a slash.
fundamental frequency A term derived from the study of the physics of
sound, and used in acoustic phonetics, referring to the lowest frequency