18 expected that a syntactic study will break down the formation of particular
sentences or phrases. From the explanation about syntax, it can be inferred that there are two
main elements in building a sentence. They are the categories of syntax and the patterns or rules of syntax. As a result, this part will be divided into two main
categories, namely th e syntactic categories and the general rule based on O‟Grady,
et al. 1997.
a. Categories
One of the elements in sentence formation is categorization. Words can be enlarged into phrases, sentences, or clauses as a result of small number of classes
which is called syntactic categories. Further, O‟Grady, et al. 1997 classify the
categories into two big items. They are lexical categories and non-lexical categories. The lexical categories are groups of categories which are prominent in
sentence formation. Further, the lexical categories consist of noun, verb, adjective, preposition, and adverb. For the shake of convenience in later discussion, the
lexical categories will be labelled as N for noun, V for verb, A for adjective, P for preposition, and Adv for adverb. Besides, the non-lexical categories
consist of determiner, degree word, qualifier, auxiliary, and conjunction. Respectively, the non-lexical categories will be treated equally by giving them the
label such as Det for determiner, Deg for degree word, Qual for qualifier, Aux for auxiliary, and Con for conjunction. To summarize the categories, the
researcher provides a table of cate gories based on O‟Grady, et al. 1997 as
illustrated in Table 2.1. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
19
Table 2. 1 The Syntactic Categories Based on O’Grady, et al. 1997
LEXICAL Categories
Symbols Examples
Noun N
Bird, glass, teacher Verb
V Run, eat, walk
Adjective A
Tall, short, handsome Preposition
P At, in, on
Adverb Adv
Quickly, slowly,
yesterday
NON- LEXICAL
Determiner Det
A, an, the Degree word
Deg Very, so, quite
Qualifier Qual
Always, never,
almost Auxiliary
Aux Will, could, may
Conjunction Conj
And, or, but
b. General Rule of A Phrase
O‟Grady, et al. 1997 state that there will be also a set of rules or patterns to build a sentence as well as a phrase beside the categories. The initial result of
this research showed that almost all of the definitions were phrases. Culicover 1982 defines a phrase as “any sequence of words in the language that itself is a
member of some categories” p. 10. Further, the phrase commonly has a same generic structure. The phrase consists of three elements, namely specifier, head,
and complement as illustrated in Figure 2.3. XPs
Specifier Heads
Complement
Figure 2.3 The General Rule of A Phrase
20 The specifier covers the non-lexical categories such as determiner,
qualifier, and degree of word. The specifier is used to specify the phrase or the sentence before the head. For instance, the phrase is
the story of my life
. In this case,
the
is a determiner. It acts as the specifier of the head
story
. Besides, the phrase is also completed with
my life
as a complement.
6. Noun Phrase
Radford 1997 argues that “noun phrase is a phrase whose head is noun”
p. 266. For instance, in the expression
a thin book
, the head is
book
which is a noun, thus the expression belongs to a noun phrase. Noun Phrase is usually
symbolized with
NP
which stands for
Noun Phrase
. However, as well as sentence, the constructions of the noun phrase can be
complex. Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik 1985 also agree that it is not only the sentence which has the complex construction. The noun phrase might
have the complex structure. As a result, the noun phrase does not only consist of a simple construction such as in
a thin book
with
a
as the
determiner
,
thin
as the
premodifier
, and
book
as the
head
. In order to have a better understanding, the researcher will provide some examples which show that the noun phrase might be
complex in Figure 2.4.
Figure 2.4 The Examples of Noun Phrase NP
i
The headmaster
ii
The wise headmaster
iii
The wise headmaster of the school
iv
The wise headmaster of the school which has a car
