17 Headlines are like one- or two-sentence summaries of the articles, but they
are shortened because of limits on space. Certain short words are deleted, words are abbreviated. Mid short words are often used in place of longer,
more common words. Headlines are written according to certain rules, which can be used to reconstruct what the summary sentence was p. 116.
Besides, Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik 1985 point out that a newspaper has a special language, which is called block language. The block
language is most in the form of nonsentence. It is in the form of noun or noun phrase or nominal clause. Moreover, Lan 2011 agrees that the headlines appear
mostly in the form of phrases than sentences because of the limited space and the headlines often break the grammatical rules and use nonstandard structure to
create the space-saving headlines. Based on these statements, the researcher concludes that the headlines are mostly in the form of shorten sentence and in the
form of noun phrase or noun clause. Furthermore, the researcher would present syntactic features theory which can be identified in the headlines into two major
features, namely a noun phrase and a verb phrase.
a. Noun Phrase
The first syntactic feature is noun phrase. It is stated that most of the headlines are in the form of noun phrase Lan, 2011. It means that the head of the
headlines is in the form of noun. Warriner 1982 mentions that a noun is a word used to label a person, a place, a thing, or an idea. Furthermore, he classifies a
noun in three types: proper and common, abstracts and concrete, and collective.
1 Proper and Common Noun
A proper noun is used to represent a particular person, a particular place, or a particular thing. It is usually capitalized Warriner, 1982. Quirk, Greenbaum,
18 Leech, and Svartvik 1972 give the more complete examples of a proper noun,
namely the names of specific person, places, countries, months, days, holidays, and magazines. Meanwhile, a common noun is a noun which does not label a
particular person, a place, or a thing and it is not capitalized Warriner, 1982. The examples are woman, city, and building Warriner, 1982, p. 5.
2 Abstract and Concrete Noun
An abstract noun is a noun used to show a quality, a characteristic, and an idea Warriner, 1982. The examples are strength, love, and courage Warriner,
1982, p. 5. On the other hand, a concrete noun is a noun which is able to be perceived by the sense, for example hat, desk, book, and box Warriner, 1982, p.
5.
3 Collective Noun
A collective noun is a noun which names a group Warriner, 1982. The examples are team and class Warriner, 1982, p. 5.
Furthermore, Quirk et al. 1972 also note that a noun can be complex. They divide a complex noun phrase into three components. The components are
the head, the premodification, and the postmodification. The following points present the explanation of the components.
4 The Head
The head is the element which will determine the rest of the sentence. The head will be the concord of the sentence Quirk et al., 1972. The example is if the
head of the noun phrase is singular, the verb which follows the noun phrase should be singular too.
