full (adj.)

A term sometimes used in the GRAMMATICAL CLASSIFICATION of WORDS to refer to one of two postulated major classes in LANGUAGE, the other being EMPTY. Full words are said to be those which contain LEXICAL MEANING (e.g. table, man, go, red) as opposed to EMPTY words, which have a purely grammatical role. The distinction has come under criticism, largely on the grounds that the boundary between ‘full’ and ‘empty’ words is not as clear-cut as is suggested. Words like while, but, in, etc., are considered to be grammatical words, but they plainly do have some independently stateable meaning. ‘Full’ may also be encountered as part of the specification of types of grammatical UNIT, e.g. full verb (i.e. the lexical VERB in the verb PHRASE), full sentence (i.e. a MAJOR SENTENCE type, consisting of SUBJECT and PREDICATE), full predication (in FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR).