Identifying the Types of Tense

1 Indonesia and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference UNFCCC will hold a climate conference in Bali from Dec. 3 to 14. The Jakarta Post, Thursday, November 1 st , 2007, p.9 2 Mozaharul Alam of Bangladesh Center for Advanced Studies said that under Kyoto, developed countries supported adaptation funds through a voluntary mechanism.The Jakarta Post, Thursday, November 1 st , 2007, p.6 Sentence 1 is an example of a simple sentence which consists of a clause. The subject of the clause is Indonesia and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference UNFCCC, the verb is will hold, the object of the clause is a climate conference, and the adverbials are in Bali from Dec. 3 to 14. Sentence 2 is an example of a complex sentence. This complex sentence consists of two clauses; the independent clause or the main clause is Mozaharul Alam of Bangladesh Center for Advanced Studies said that under Kyoto, developed countries supported adaptation funds through a voluntary mechanism, with Mozaharul Alam of Bangladesh Center for Advanced Studies as the subject, said as the verb and that under Kyoto, developed countries supported adaptation funds through a voluntary mechanism as the object, and the dependent clause is that under Kyoto, developed countries supported adaptation funds through a voluntary mechanism. The subject of the dependent clause is that developed countries, the verb is supported, the object is adaptation funds, and under Kyoto and through voluntary mechanism are the adverbials. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI From the samples of the data, the writer found that the occurrences of the simple sentences are fewer than the complex sentences. The complex sentences in the articles are used to give more complete information to the reader. As a news report, most of the sentences in the articles are in the form of quotations and direct speeches, that is why the occurrences of the complex sentences are bigger than the simple sentences. In conducting this study, the writer is more concerned about the clauses rather than the sentences. According to Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary, a clause is a group of words that includes subject and verb, forming a sentence or part of a sentence, while a sentence is a set of words expressing a statement, a question, or a command. A sentence usually contains a subject and a verb and in written English, they begin with capital letter and end with a full stop or an equivalent mark. The writer only analyzed the finite clauses because the main goals of this study are analyzing the tense choices, and the grammatical meanings. The types of tense can only be seen from the finite verbs which occurred in the finite clauses, and the occurrences of the finite verbs in the finite clauses make the sentences or the clauses easier to be understood. As Miller 1969: 48 state that, clarity is essential in journalism language. The writer found that there are 1349 finite clauses from the corpus of the study. There are 22 finite clauses from the headlines and 1327 finite clauses from the articles of the headline news. Those finite clauses from the headlines and also