{"id":196,"date":"2006-10-03T18:13:49","date_gmt":"2006-10-03T18:13:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/?p=196"},"modified":"2018-08-27T21:23:20","modified_gmt":"2018-08-27T21:23:20","slug":"function-and-content","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/function-and-content\/","title":{"rendered":"Function and Content"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Last week we spent some time thinking about the little Slovak word \u201cno,\u201d which turns out to have a very far-reaching and subtle range of significance. Words can be broken down into what linguists call \u201cfunction words\u201d and \u201ccontent words.\u201d Now this is a simplification, but the significance of function words is to organize the flow of information of the expressions in which they occur. Consider the following sentence pair:<\/p>\n

(i) John was fond of Mary
\n(ii) John was found by Mary<\/p>\n

If we try to explain the significance of the words \u201cof\u201d and \u201cby,\u201d we might have some problems, especially if we think only of dictionary definitions. It would be far easier to reflect on how they function rather than what they mean, and much more productive, practically speaking! In the first sentence, \u201cof\u201d functions to link \u201cMary\u201d to \u201cfond\u201d as its object. That is, the relationship between \u201cfond\u201d and \u201cMary\u201d and \u201cJohn\u201d is identical to what we have in the following sentence:<\/p>\n

(iii) John likes Mary<\/p>\n

In comparison, \u201cby\u201d in (ii) tells us that \u201cMary\u201d is linked to \u201cfound\u201d as its\u00a0subject<\/em>, and that \u201cJohn\u201d should be interpreted as the\u00a0object<\/em>\u00a0of the action of the verb, just as in (iv):<\/p>\n

(iv) Mary found John<\/p>\n

Returning to Slovak \u201cno,\u201d we can see that it works on a variety of functional planes. Signifying either affirmation or negation, it has an almost mathematical formulation: it is an \u2018operator,\u2019 specifically, a \u201cpolarity item\u201d (+\/-) which tells how the associated expression is to be taken. We also saw Slovak \u201cno\u201d signify something close to \u2018but,\u2019 another organizational concept, linking two grammatically identical but semantically variant expressions into a compound structure.<\/p>\n

Other instances of Slovak \u201cno,\u201d where the English translation would be something like \u201cwell,\u201d showcase the \u201cmodal function\u201d of the word, where \u2018modality\u2019 can be summarized as reflecting the speakers\u2019 feelings about the associated expression.<\/p>\n

Contrasting with function words, content words carry the lion\u2019s share of the specific information in expressions in which they occur. But what exactly is their \u201ccontent\u201d? As we attribute definitions to the content words of our language, how do we account for relationships that exist among them? Why are \u201chot\u201d and \u201ccold\u201d opposites, but not \u201clollipop\u201d and \u201cdiagonal\u201d? How are \u201ccause\u201d and \u201ccoerce\u201d related? And do \u201cboy\u201d and \u201clad\u201d really mean the same thing?<\/p>\n

At the top of this essay is a photo of a t-shirt that I\u2019ve been wearing around Slovakia. What is it that caused someone\u2014the creator of this t-shirt\u2014to select these words in particular? Why do Slovaks often laugh at me when they notice what is printed there? What can we glean about the nature of \u2018meaning\u2019 by thinking about other words that would be appropriate for this shirt. I suspect that these might be candidates: \u201cbur\u010diak,\u201d \u201c\u017ein\u010dica\u201d . . . . Can you think of others?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week we spent some time thinking about the little Slovak word \u201cno,\u201d which turns out to have a very far-reaching and subtle range of significance. Words can be broken down into what linguists call \u201cfunction words\u201d and \u201ccontent words.\u201d … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56564],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words-and-their-meanings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":231,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions\/231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}