[…] in any language, the number of distinct functions is very much smaller than that of elements capable of performing them; these element, the so-called lexical items are more informative and, accordingly, generally given a preferential treatment: they may be provided with an accent which gives them prominence, and their initial phonemes are, as a rule, articulated with particular care so as to facilitate their early identification in the flow of speech.
- Martinet (1962), a pag.46

‘Function’, which is quite fashionable in some quarters, has no great appeal in linguistics. It is obviously redolent of the uses to which languages are put; it suggests contact with the world at large, those very contacts we have had to disregard in order to achieve self-sufficiency. […] Actually, all ‘structuralists’ reckon with the function of linguistic units: setting apart a feature as ‘distinctive’ implies that its function suffices to make it an object of interest and assign it to a definite class. But becoming conscious of the paramount importance of function in linguistics will normally lead to a greater respect of reality. And what is meant here by ‘reality’, is not any physical or semantic trait which happens to be single out, but linguistic reality, that which is recognized as such because it belongs to a given language where it exerts a definite function. Function supplies the linguist with a scale of values that will stubbornly resist any attempt on the part of the theorist to make facts submit the requirement of a method. Function may help in bridging the gulf between the so-called progressive and traditional group. It may bring about contacts that will dispel, on the one side, the belief that only sluggishness and vested interests are preventing one’s opponents from discovering the truth, on the other side, the conviction that the new trends are incompatible with careful observation and respect for facts.
- Martinet (1962), a pag.3

We may want to define ‘function’ as the linguistic counterpart of the relationship between one element of the experience and the whole of the experience so that we could speak of function in the case of any one of the marginal elements, but hardly in the case of the predicative core; the predicative function would then be no real function. This, after all, is a matter of convention. But even if we decide to speak of function only in reference to a definite type of relationship, we should be ready to ascribe different functions to the predicate at least in those languages–English is one of them–where speakers have at their disposal two or more forms of predicate indicating different types of relationships with the participants of the action; if opening is the action, and the participants are a gardener in a gate, I may choose to say either 'the gardener opens the gate' or 'the gate is opened by the gardener'.
- Martinet (1962), a pag.49