9

Form and function

The distinction between form and function is one of the fundamental distinc-
tions in linguistics, yet it causes problems surprisingly often. The basic insight
is very simple, yet failure to understand it leads to many complications in lin-
guistic descriptions.

The basics
We need to begin with some definitions of some linguistic terms. Parts of
speech were introduced in section 5. Words belonging to many of these classes
can be the most important word in a phrase which contains them. In red onions,
for example, the most important word (or ) is onions because it is obliga-
tory within the construction and because the phrase as a whole denotes a subset
of onions. Onions is a noun, and red onions is a  . By a similar logic,
extremely unusual is an adjective phrase, in the park is a prepositional phrase,
and so on.
In a sentence like Kim runs the video shop, the noun phrase Kim is not com-
patible with a verb form run (as we might find if the initial noun phrase were
Kim’s family). This noun phrase is called the  of the sentence, and is
traditionally often equated with the person or thing that carries out the action
of the verb. There are instances, though, where there is not much action for the
subject to carry out: in The video costs $30, for example, the subject is the video.
In Kim runs the video shop, the video shop acts as the (direct) object of the verb
run. The object is closely related to the verb (compare ate the cake with *ate the
water, *ate the sky, etc.). Just as the subject is commonly thought of as the per-
former of the action of the verb, the object is commonly thought of as the
receiver or patient of the action of the verb. In the sentence Kim wrote Pat a
THE LINGUISTICS STUDENT’S HANDBOOK 58

letter, a letter is the direct object, while Pat is the  . (In some
older treatments, Pat would still be considered an indirect object in Kim wrote
a letter to Pat, but it is more often treated differently, reflecting the grammati-
cal structure rather than the meaning.) Finally, in Kim is the owner, the owner is
called the  . The owner refers to the same person as the
subject does (namely, Kim), and while objects can become the subjects of
passive verbs (The video shop is run by Kim), subject complements cannot (*The
owner is been by Kim).
With those preliminaries out of the way, we can turn to form and function.
A potato can be used for a number of things. It can be cooked in various ways
and eaten, whether in boiled, mashed, baked, fried or chipped form. It can be
turned into potato flour; it can be used to hold cocktail sticks carrying lumps
of cheese or other delicacies; it can be used to make stamps for printing with;
it can be used to make pellets to fire from a potato gun. The same basic item,
the potato, has various functions.
In the same way, the phrase the mouse, while remaining a noun phrase, may
have any one of a number of jobs in a sentence. Consider the ways it used in
(1)–(5).

(1) The mouse ran away.

(2) I’ve caught the mouse.
(3) I gave the mouse a piece of cheese.
(4) They showed me a picture of the mouse.
(5) I trod on the mouse’s tail.

In (1) the mouse is the subject of the sentence, in (2) it is the direct object of
the verb, in (3) it is the indirect object, in (4) it is the object of a preposition,
part of the post-modifier for picture, and in (5) it is part of the determiner. The
form remains the same, but the functions in the sentence have changed. In this
particular case the difference between form and function is captured by the
terminology used. Phrase types are form labels, while subject, object, etc. are
function labels. So although our terminology does not specifically draw atten-
tion to what is a form and what is a function, in this instance it provides us
with distinct terms for talking about the two aspects of the thing we are
describing.
Similarly, we can find a prepositional phrase such as in the garden used with
different functions, and again we have, or can find, terminologies which allow
us to make the distinctions.

(6) The chair in the garden is more comfortable than this one.
(7) After lunch we walked in the garden.
(8) The cat is in the garden.
59 FORM AND FUNCTION

In (6) in the garden is a post-modifier to the head noun chair, in (7) it is an

adverbial of place (which may be given some other label). In (8) there is dispute
in the literature as to whether in the garden should be seen as an adverbial or as
a subject complement, but in either case its function is given a label distinct
from its form. Its form remains a prepositional phrase.

So why does this create problems?

The problems with form and function arise in different places, depending on
the sophistication of the analyst. Beginning students may confuse nouns with
subjects until they have the difference specifically drawn to their attention.
Since it is not always clear that the ancient Greek grammarians kept the dis-
tinction in mind, we cannot be too surprised by this error, though today we do
want to recognise it as an error.
Problems arise more easily where the terminology does not make any dis-
tinction between form and function. Two examples will make this point.
Consider words which can occur between an article and a noun, for example
in the _ bracelet. One obvious set of words which can occur in this position is
made up of words for colour, description and size and so on: words like blue,
cheap, long, shiny, thick, yellow. These words are usually called adjectives.
Another set of words which can occur here, though, is words for materials:
words like amber, copper, silver, and the like. These are words which usually
occur in noun phrases and in functions like those shown in (1)–(4). They are
usually nouns. And they do not behave like adjectives in that we cannot say *the
rather/very/so amber bracelet, *the copperest/most copper bracelet. So these are
not adjectives. The problem is that many grammatical models do not give us a
function label for what it is that both an adjective and a noun can do – what
their function can be – when they appear before a noun in such a phrase. We
can easily invent one. We can call these pre-modifiers, and determine that this is
the functional label we will use. But in the absence of such a label, we occa-
sionally find amber, copper and silver treated as adjectives in constructions like
the amber bracelet. Thus The Chambers Dictionary (9th edition, 2003) says under
amber, after defining it as a fossilised resin, ‘adj made of amber; the colour of
amber’. The same dictionary does not call crocodile an adjective, even though
the word occurs in expressions such as crocodile handbag, crocodile shoes, croco-
dile tears. There is a case to be made for accepting amber as an adjective in an
amber light, but it is unnecessary to extend this to an amber necklace. Not only
adjectives and nouns may be pre-modifers, as is illustrated by the then leader
(adverb), the down train (preposition), an I don’t-want-to-know reaction
(sentence).
As a second example, consider the typology of languages according to the
order of the subject, verb and object. Languages are typically classified as SVO,
THE LINGUISTICS STUDENT’S HANDBOOK 60

SOV, VSO, etc., where S stands for ‘subject’, O stands for ‘object’ and V stands
for ‘verb’. As we have seen, subject and object are functions. We would assume,
therefore, that verb is also a function, and, indeed, it must be understood as one
in such a classification. However, a verb is also a form. A verb, we might say in
English, is a word which can take a third person singular -s, which has a past
tense form and a past participle form (which will be homophonous if the verb
is regular), and which has a form ending in -ing. These are all statements about
forms. Just as noun and adjective are labels referring to form, so too is verb. But
now we have a paradox: verb is a label relating to form sometimes, and it is
sometimes a functional label. Some scholars have used the term  for
the functional label, and retained verb for the form. Unfortunately, the use of
the label verb in the two distinct ways is very widespread, and care is required
not to confuse the two.

Reference
The Chambers Dictionary. (2003). 9th edn. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap.