[kde-doc-english]checking thesaurus documentation

[Frederik Fouvry]

| > > Line 85:
| > > What do you mean by "function words"? Is this verbs, or names of
| > > functions?
| > 
| > These are words that don't have a "meaning" but only a grammatical 
| > function, e.g. "if".
| 
| But "if" is a conjunction and does have a meaning in my dictionary.

"Function word" is a standard term in linguistics (and hence in
many grammar books) for that kind of words (meaning words are the
opposite; these are roughly nouns, verbs, adjectives prepositions
(mostly) and adverbs).  Function words are defined as indicating
the function of a phrase (of meaning words) in a sentence
(determiners, conjunctions, ...).  "if" and "that" as
conjunctions indication that the following sentence is a
subordinate sentence.  The meaning words don't indicate that
function of their own.
(As usual in linguistics though, none of these distinctions can
be made strict.)

Greetings,

Frederik