The Background of Study

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1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 The Background of Study

Language is the most important thing in all parts of the world in having interactions with others people. People can communicate with the others include spoken or written language by making statements, explaining report, and expressing ideas. Without the existence of the language, people will have never been able to have a relation with others. Allsopp and Hunt 1967:174 say that language has been defined as the expression and communication of ideas and emotions by a set of sounds made by the speech organs and arranged in meaningful patterns. It is easily man’s most effective means of communicating with others. The sounds are combined to form words, which can be arranged as phrases, clauses and sentences. Winston and Rinehart 1993:21 say that language is the same no matter what system of writing may be used to record it, just as a person is the same no matter how you take his picture; the most of the languages that are spoken today has been applied either in relatively recent times or not to all. A little different to Winston and Rinehart, Siswanto 2008:19 says “bahasa yang digunakan didalam karya sastra adalah bahasa dikenal oleh masyarakat pemakai bahasa itu, bahasa natural”. Siswanto says that language that is used in literature is the language known by the public users of the language , it is natural language. However, all ideas which have been described by all authors and linguists about definition of language have a relation with the other opinions that language is spoken and used by people in many contexts of their Universitas Sumatera Utara 2 daily life to communicate each other. Language, itself, will always guide all people who speak that language in order to make statements, expressions, and even when describing something that they would like to know by making sentences to build the information. The writer of this paper has chosen Kenneth Grahame’s novel the wind in the willows as the subject of this paper. The writer is interested in describing the sentences that are used by the author to compose the novel because the novel contains so many kinds of sentences according its classifications. What kinds of sentences are used by Kenneth in his novel will be the topic that writer is going to explain in this paper. Generally, a sentence is a group of words, phrases, clauses that has a meaning. It has a subject and predicate. It means that a sentence is built up by those elements which are going to be the most important part of a sentence. Hans 1967:8 says that the basic model of the English sentence consists of only two major elements. A complete sentence normally has at least a subject and a predicate. Purba 2010:6 says that a sentence is a group of words that contains a subject and a predicate and that is not introduced by a connecting word such as although, because, when or where that makes it dependent upon another group or words to complete its meaning. Lauren and Duncan 1984:33-34say that a sentence is a self-contained grammatical unit that ends with a “full-stop” punctuation mark period, question Universitas Sumatera Utara 3 mark or exclamation point. It must contain a verb and a subject stated or implied, and it must state a complete thought. Sentence is a part of grammar because it contains a subject and predicate. As Purba 2010:6 says, “all complete sentences have two main parts, a subject and predicate. The subjects name the person, thing or concept that the sentence is about. The predicate makes a statement or asks question about the subject.” The subject of a sentence is usually a noun or pronoun. Nouns name or classify things, places, activities, and concepts: studio, committee, Gary, Medan, athletics, courage, wealth. The predicate of a sentence always contains a verb, a word that makes some sort of assertion. And pronouns are words that can substitute for nouns. Thus, pronouns can be subjects or objects or verbs or prepositions. A sentence cannot exist without a verb. Verbs indicate some kind of action, the occurrence of something, or the presence of some condition. Verb, noun, pronoun, predicate and subject can be learnt through learning grammar. We can learn them in eight parts of speech, they are: noun, adjective, pronoun, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection. Woods 2010:9-10 says,” Grammar means a set of standard that you have to follow in order to speak and write better. Functional grammar guides you to the right expression –the one that fits what you are trying to say –by ensuring that the sentence is correct.” However, the writer is not going to talk further about the elements, structures or even the parts of a sentence, but the writer would like to talk about the kinds of sentence. Universitas Sumatera Utara 4 When we speak to somebody, it means that we have made a sentence. Without realizing of what we’ve talked to make sentences in daily conversation, we have already made some example that we don’t realize what kind of sentence of that. For instance, when somebody says to his friend “go out”, it means that he has made a sentence that is simple sentence. The subject of that sentence is you, he whom somebody talks to. And the verb is Go out. The simple sentence is sentence which contains only one subject and one predicate. We are born knowing how to make sentences. Linguist Noam Chomsky and biologist Lewis Thomas tell us human are genetically programmed to identify the grammatical patterns. Thomas says,”The capacity… to organize and deploy words into intelligible sentences is innate in the human mind.” Allsop and Hunt 1967:15 say that sentence may be classified according to their grammatical structure, their function, and their rhetorical form. The classification according to grammatical may be divided into four kinds of sentences, they are: the simple sentence, which contains only one subject and one predicate, the compound sentence, which contains two or more principal clauses, the complex sentence, which consists of a principal clause and one or more subordinate clause, and the last one is the compound complex-sentence, which consists of two or more principal clauses and one or more subordinate clauses. So, based on the above explanations, the writer has already decided to describe the sentences are used by Kenneth through his Novel the wind in the willows. The writer has found so many sentences in that novel which are going to be described. For instance, Universitas Sumatera Utara 5 1 The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring –cleaning home. 2 The Rat sculled smartly across and made fast. 3 The afternoon sunwas getting low as the rat sculled gently homewards in a dreamy mood. 4 The Rat hummed a tune and the Mole recollected that animal which etiquette forbade any sort of comment on the sudden disappearance of one’s friends at any moment, for any reason or no reason whatever. The above sentences are some of the Kenneth’s novel sentence which representative the sentences according to grammatical structure. The bold words are the principal clauses that sign the sentences whether they are the simple sentence, compound sentence, complex sentence and compound complex sentence. The above sentences have one or more clause. The first example is the simple sentence, for it only has one clause that is the Mole had been working. The second example is the compound sentence, for it contains two principal clause, they are: The Ratsculled smartly across and the Rat made fast. The both principal clause independent clause are joined by a coordinator and. The third example is the complex sentence, for it contains a principal clause and one subordinate clause, they are: the afternoon sunwas getting low independent clauseprincipal clause, as rat sculled gently homewards in a dreamy mood subordinate clausedependent clause. Universitas Sumatera Utara 6 Finally the last example is compound complex sentence, for it contains two principal clauses and one subordinate clause. The Rat hummed a tune, the Mole recollected that animal are the independent clauses which joined by a coordinator and. The dependent clause of the sentence 4 is which etiquette forbade any sort of comment on the sudden disappearance of one’s friends at any moment, for any reason or no reason whatever. However, to describe a sentence by using that way, we get to understand more in clause. Clause which meant here is independent clause and dependent clause. We must be able to separate which one is the independent and which is not independent clause. Conjunction understanding is also needed, for conjunction usually is used to join independent clause and dependent clause. It can be seen in all sentences which have more than a clause. 1.2 Problem of Study Based on the background, the problem of this study can be defined as below: 1 What kinds of sentences are used by Kenneth Grahame in the novel the wind in the willows? 2 What kinds of sentences are dominantly used by Kenneth Grahame in the novel the wind in the willows? Universitas Sumatera Utara 7

1.3 Scope of Study