Identifying the Grammatical Reason of Choosing the Tense
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
from the articles were analyzed further based on the types of the tenses and also the grammatical reasons in the next paragraphs.