Background of the Analysis

Alfian Fajri. An analysis of relative clause in george bernard shaw’s play “arms and the man”. 2007 USU e-Repository©2009

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Analysis

Human beings are social creatures that can not live alone without interacting with one another in this world. They are tied with many aspects in their life. One of them is to communicate with others. In the process of communication, they need a media to express their thoughts, which is known as language. Language, the most distinguishing feature of human behavior, is a tool of communication which separates human beings from animals. Bloomfield 1961: 181 pointed out that the effect of languages are remarkable, and include much of what distinguishes man from animals. It is known that in our daily life, language enable us to express our ideas and allow us to live and cooperate with other people. Language is not only a form of communication, but it is also a form of social status. It means that inability to use language well can affect someone’s status in society, and even alter their personality. Because of its crucial importance in human life, an increasing number of psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, teachers, speech therapists, computer scientists, and journalists realize that they need to study language more deeply. Therefore, it is not surprising that linguistics, the systematic study of language, has been one of fastest expanding branches of knowledge in recent years. When it deals with language, people express it with their own ways. The popular way is by uttering it and the other way is by expressing it through written text, which is implemented in the form of sentence. Alfian Fajri. An analysis of relative clause in george bernard shaw’s play “arms and the man”. 2007 USU e-Repository©2009 The expression of language through written text must use grammar to standardize the process of writing. Because, the characteristic of written language promotes the development of literature and intellectual development in general. If we know something about grammar, we can criticize and discuss our own writing, and learn to improve it. Through grammar our English will be clear, economical, and effective. Grammar makes every speaker and writer have good sentences because it consists of the pattern of arrangement of part of words into words. In making a good sentence, we should know what sentence is and what its element are. Sentence is combination of words expressing a complete thought and ideas. The largest unit of grammar is sentence. Leech 1982 : 26 states that a sentence is composed of smaller units, clauses, phrases, and words. The most important unit in composing a sentence is clauses. Clauses are the principal structures of which sentences are composed. A sentence may consist of one or more clauses. Leech 1983 : 211 describes and classifies clauses in three important ways : 1. In terms of the clause elements subject, verb, etc from which they are constructed, and the verb patterns which are formed from these elements. 2. In terms of the amount of use which a clause makes of verb phrase structure. On this , we distinguish between finite clauses, non-finite clauses, and verbless clauses. 3. In terms of clauses function, i.e. the function a clause performs in a sentence ; e.g. whether it is nominal clauses, an adverbial clauses, and adjectival clauses. Alfian Fajri. An analysis of relative clause in george bernard shaw’s play “arms and the man”. 2007 USU e-Repository©2009 A clause may be an independent clause, or dependent clause. In terms of dependent clause, the clause could be differentiated based on their grammatical function as nominal clause, adverbial clause, and relative clause. Oshima and Hogue 1999 : 209 said that a relative clause is a dependent clause that functions as an adjective ; that is, it modifies a noun or pronoun. For this reason, relative clauses are also called adjective clause. In this thesis, I attempt to analyze the clause of relative clauses in George Bernard Shaw’s play “ARMS AND THE MAN”. I take play as my object analysis because the play always use persons or things as one of the character which usually are used in relative clause. For example Raina closes the shutters. She turns and sees Louka, who has been watching the scene curiously. In this sentence, the dependent clause who has been watching the scene curiously is relative clause that modifies noun Louka. This noun is the antecedent of relative clause and one of the character in the play. I take George Bernard Shaw’s play “ARMS AND THE MAN” as my object of analysis because I want to understand clearly about relative clauses practically not only theoretically. In my opinion, to understand and identify relative clause in a play is more difficult than in the grammar book.

1.2 The Problems of The Analysis