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What's the term for general, non-specific words, like:

and, is, the, of, in, on, or, this, that...

I mean the words which don't specify the content subject-matter of a sentence, but which rather provide general structural support.

For example, in this sentence:

"Consider the latest transportation vehicle to claim its move to solar energy, namely, the watercraft and tanker industries."

The following words might be considered content or subject-matter:

transportation, vehicle, claim, move, solar, energy, watercraft, tanker, industries

The remainder provide structure and meaning:

the, to, its, and

Where can I find a complete list of such words?

Foobie Bletch
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johny why
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3 Answers3

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They're called Function words. In English function words include: articles, prepositions, pronouns, interjections, auxiliary verbs, conjunctions, determiners, question words (how, when, where, what) etc. You can find more function words here

Decapitated Soul
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  • Great! For extra points, any idea where to find a complete list? Your article seems only give only a limited set of examples. – johny why Apr 18 '21 at 20:33
  • @johnywhy: requests for lists are off-topic on ELU. (I didn't find any. Sorry.) – Decapitated Soul Apr 18 '21 at 20:34
  • "requests for lists are off-topic" -- Ok, that seems weird and arbitrary. – johny why Apr 18 '21 at 20:39
  • Can I suggest that, in a sentence, all words other than "noun" and "adjective" are "functional words". – r13 Apr 18 '21 at 20:41
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    Consider does not seem to fit any of these categories, and yet the OP treated it as a low-value word in his example. – jsw29 Apr 18 '21 at 20:57
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    @johny why You should define the exact meaning of "low-value-words". I don't think there is a list of such words not taking into account their dependency on how a sentence was organized. Some words may be deemed low-value in one sentence but could have an important role (high-value) in the other. – r13 Apr 18 '21 at 20:59
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    @jsw29: You're right. The OP updated their question after I had already posted an answer. – Decapitated Soul Apr 18 '21 at 21:04
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    function words are perhaps the most valuable words there are. – Lambie Apr 18 '21 at 22:28
  • @jsw29 In my example, i think "consider" is lower-value than "solar". Any written essay is asking the reader to "consider" the contents of the essay, implicitly. In the sentence For example, say there are three cars., i would argue that "for example, say" are lower-value than "three cars". I'm not claiming my example to be correct as a universal rule. It's just a rough attempt to suggest what i'm looking for. – johny why Apr 18 '21 at 22:47
  • @r13 Yep, very contextual. However, i would argue that the word "the" tends to be lower-value in any context, than the word "solar". – johny why Apr 18 '21 at 22:48
  • @Lambie Consider the following: "Consider, the, latest, to, its, to, namely, the, and." I believe the words i identified in my question are without a doubt far more meaningful. Someone could grasp the meaning, or at least the key topics, of the essay by ignoring all the low-weight words, and reading just the high-weight words: "transportation, vehicle, claim, move, solar, energy, watercraft, tanker, industries" – johny why Apr 18 '21 at 22:54
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    Some of those “low-value” words can turn out to be rather crucial conjunctions: https://youtu.be/o7v0PePgVIs – Jim Apr 19 '21 at 00:27
  • @Jim For sure! I'm not suggesting these words aren't crucial. They are simply a different class of words, linguistically. – johny why Apr 19 '21 at 08:07
  • I guess I have to say it: A list of words produces zero linguistic meaning (except perhaps in concrete poetry). Arithmetic precedes algebra. Meaning arises via linearity in writing or speech and words are connected to each other.[ Stop writing the first-person pronoun I in lower case] – Lambie Apr 19 '21 at 13:27
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    The value of any word depends on the algorithm used. I might assign value based on the extent to which it impacts the meaning of a sentence. My algorithm is clearly different than yours. Therefore without knowing yours it’s impossible to generate a list, and if you know your algorithm then you should be able to run all words through it and determine their value (assuming they always have the same value). Here again, it would seem to me that a word’s value might change depending on the sentence in which it is used. This again implies that it would be impossible to create a complete list. – Jim Apr 19 '21 at 17:23
  • @Jim i may agree, not sure. I think the difference between neuroscience and the or even consider is to do with content -- the subject matter. That's what i'm driving at here. Btw, i removed the loaded word "value" from my question, as that has ruffled some feathers. – johny why Apr 19 '21 at 19:15
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From Damp Squid: The English Language Laid Bare:

a, as, not, and so forth don't convey much meaning compared with meatier words like people, child, good. They don't point to anything in the real world, or suggest ideas, but act as the glue holding together other words which have greater information content. Because they are devoid of conventional meaning content (sic), the eminent Victorian grammarian Henry Sweet christened them ‘empty words’, and also ‘form words’: they are words in form only. ‘Empty words’ are also called ‘grammatical’ or ‘function’ words—their function being to hold conversation or writing together grammatically. Their opposite numbers are ‘full words’, ‘content words’, or ‘lexical words’.

However, “low-value” is an extremely loaded and subjective way of putting it. It’s estimated that the ten words the, be, to, and, of, a, in, that, have, and I make up a quarter of everything written in the English language. Think about that: 25% of text in the English language is the same ten words. By “low-value” do you mean “absolutely essential to communication”?

Foobie Bletch
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  • Interesting and important points. I said "low-value" for lack of a more appropriate term. That's the point of this question. Not trying to discriminate against syllables. – johny why Apr 18 '21 at 22:39
  • At first I thought you meant that the words didn't have a conventional semantic value in the same way that, say, a + sign in mathematics doesn't have a numerical value. But the way you said "No offense to the word 'the', but I believe it has less value" made it sound like you actually were making a value judgement. – Foobie Bletch Apr 19 '21 at 01:49
  • Yes, i'm passing judgement on the! I'm so wordist :D I was being sarcastic, silly-- because i knew some snowflake would feel bad for the. Yes, we all know that sentence function words difficult impossible interpret. Don't worry, i'm not suggesting that the English language cancel the. :D – johny why Apr 19 '21 at 02:23
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I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but I do work in Natural Language Processing (applying AI to language) and there we call them "stop words". Essentially, words that are filtered out before textual analysis takes place.

VminVsky
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    Right. And the reason they're stop words is that (a) they don't mean anything and (b) they're part of the grammar, "function words", nuts and bolts holding things together, "structure". They're the words that never get a single meaning in the dictionary because dictionaries only deal with lexical (meaningful) words. And, (3) therefore they're very, very common, and they mess up counts, and you can't predict their position. So they're avoided in many counting contexts. – John Lawler Apr 18 '21 at 21:48
  • @JohnLawler interesting background information. Thanks for this! – VminVsky Apr 18 '21 at 21:54
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    More bosh. Filtering out words before analysis takes place. Oh boy. I always knew we were doomed.... – Lambie Apr 18 '21 at 22:32
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    @JohnLawler "the" isn't in the dictionary? – johny why Apr 18 '21 at 22:55
  • @Lambie I agree that, depending on context, stop-words could be very high value. "Money for nothing" means something quite different than "money from nothing". – johny why Apr 18 '21 at 23:03
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    “To be or not to be, that is the question.” Ratio of high to low = 1/10. – Xanne Apr 19 '21 at 03:28
  • @Xanne i know! Shakespeare used so many low-value words :D – johny why Apr 19 '21 at 07:56
  • This answer is the sort of thing i'm talking about. My reason for this question is related. I totally understand why @Lambie is gloomy :D – johny why Apr 19 '21 at 07:58
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    I'll try to provide a little background on when stop words are removed. Let's say we are trying to understand the context in which the words "poor" and "rich" arise in. We find basketball and football (European) are closest in proximity to "poor" and tennis and golf arise in close proximity to "rich". This then gives us a linguistic understanding of class. No stop words should be required in this situation. By no means is this method perfect, and there are countless examples like that outlined above by @Xanne where more nuance would be beneficial. This does, however, paint the broad strokes. – VminVsky Apr 19 '21 at 13:03