29 with count plural nouns. Some of them can be used only with mass nouns and
some with either count or mass. Close, 1971: 140 Having known about kinds of determiners in English grammar is very
important because they have important role in constructing sentences. The different occurrences of determiners are easily observed in the written English,
especially the articles Yule, 2004: 29. Therefore, it becomes the main concern of this study. Later, the writer will attempt to seek the occurrences of these
determiners in the news articles. Finding the occurrences of the determiners will be very helpful to answer the first research question.
5. Ellipsis in Noun Phrase and Apposition Name Phrase
Ellipsis of determiners are very common and it can be seen as grammatical omission. Ellipsis itself can be defined as “omission of part of an
utterance or grammatical structure, which can be readily understood by the hearer or reader in the context or the co-text, and which can be recovered explicitly”
Wales, 2001: 121. Therefore, it is common to say a cup and a saucer, a knife and a fork,
a hat and a coat, a raincoat and an umbrella. However, such ellipsis will only occur when the objects referred to are normally associated with each other, not in
an example like I found a hat and a camera in the car. Are they yours? The sentence is impossible to undergo ellipsis process since the objects are not
normally associated together, a hat and a camera. A similar ellipsis will occur with other determiners, e.g., the first and the second, my mother and my father,
and so on.
30 Related to the main focus of this research, which is determiner deletion in
English-language newspapers, Allan Bell 1991: 107 explains one of the examples related to determiner deletion. According to Bell, a rule characteristics
of news language deletes the determiner in appositional naming expressions of the form:
[the] Australian entrepreneur Alan bond [a] Spanish tourist Josefa Morelli
[his] fellow left-winger Bob Cryer Bell gathered this data from 4000 tokens of noun phrase which meet the structural
description of the determiner deletion rule. The process of deletion which is proposed by Bell is related to
appositive. Appositive itself is a noun that immediately follows and renames another noun in order to clarify or classify it. The function of appositive is to
reduce wordiness, add detail and add syntactic variety to a sentence Andersen, 2012. Andersen gives some examples such as Ms. Wood, Sally’s favourite
teacher in high school, is friendly and approachable. Therefore, referring to explanation, the examples above are actually appositives. The first example, [the]
Australian entrepreneur Alan Bond is a restricted appositive because there is no comma there. Then, this restricted appositive undergoes the determiner deletion
process. The definite article the is deleted in the first example. Another example from Bell is also shown in the example below:
the Neighbour star Kylie Minogue Neighbour star Kylie Minogue
31 According to Bell, the syntactic change accomplished by the rule is not just
determiner deletion. The deletion of the determiner brings a subtle but definite semantic change and confers on the descriptive NP which it did not previously
have: titleness Bell, 1991: 196. Therefore, based on the explanations proposed by Close 1971 and Bell
1991, deletion of determiner is very possible to happen. It may happen in name noun phrase apposition, as in the neighbour star Kylie Minogue into neighbour
star Kylie Minogue, and in this case the is deleted. The result of deleting the determiner is the person belongs to a class which can be categorized as an
executive class. Besides, deletion of determiner is also possible to happen in a cup and a saucer which becomes a cup and saucer, and in this case a is deleted in the
second noun phrase. The determiner in the second phrase is possible to be deleted because both nouns share the same association. Only things which are usually
associated together may have determiner deletion when they are combined. The deletion of the article in the appositional noun phrase which
indicates a unique role or task is also discussed by Quirk et al 1985. Quirk et al gives the examples as in Chelsea centre-forward Milton and the Chelsea centre-
forward, Milton Smith. They explain that in the restrictive apposition, the article is generally omitted, whereas in the non-restrictive apposition it is not. Then, it is
linked to the former construction to the institutional use of titles as in Doctor Smith, Chairman Mao, King George. According to Quirk as well, the use of
article deletion preceding a name is a characteristic of the journalistic style sometimes is knows as ‘Timestyle’ because of its association with Time magazine.
32
6. Effects of Determiner Deletion in Newspaper Writing
