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.

A. The Type of Tenses in

The Jakarta Post Headline News According to Quirk 1985: 40, the forms of English tense are only present and past. In this study, the distribution of the tenses in the headlines and also in the articles of the headline news is dominated by past tense. Even though there are few past tense forms in the headlines, one clause or 4.55, but the occurrences of the past tense forms dominate the articles of the headline news with 806 clauses or 60.74. The headlines are dominated by present tense forms with twenty-one clauses or 95.45, but the distribution of present tense in the articles of the headline news is only 521 clauses or 39.26. The clearer description of the types of tense and their occurrences can be seen in the table 1 and table 2 below. Table 1. The Types of Tense and Their Occurrences in the Headlines No. Types of Tense Occurrence Percentage 1. Present tense 21 95.45 2. Past tense 1 4.55 Total 22 100 Table 2. The types of Tense and Their Occurrence in the Articles of the Headline News No. Types of Tense Occurrence Percentage 1. Present tense 521 39.26 2. Past tense 806 60.74 Total 1327 100 Quirk 1985:40 also explains that time is universal, non-linguistic concept with three divisions: past, present, and future. By tense, we could understand the correspondence between the form of the verbs and our concept of time. The writer has talked about the basic forms of tense and also the occurrences in the above