The Definition Terms INTRODUCTION

news. In here, the most frequent construction which appears in the headline news as in + NP and most of the prepositions in show the meaning of denoting spatial rather than denoting time. The third study was “A Study on Grammatical Meanings of Finite Verb Phrases in The Jakarta Post Headline News Issued in January 2007” written by Skolastika Pritania Nirwesti in 2007. Her undergraduate thesis focused on the finite verb phrases in the headline news. The writer analyzed the finite verb phrases and found the grammatical meanings to discuss their importance in the news writing. In her study, she found that the finite verb phrases were more frequently used than the non-finite ones. Those finite verb phrases indicated some grammatical meanings such as aspects terminate, perfective, progressive, moods indicative, subjunctive, imperative, voices active and passive and tenses past, present, future. In here, the aspects were dominated by the terminate aspect, the moods were dominated by indicative mood. The voices were dominated by passive voice, while the tenses were dominated by past tense. The writer takes “A Study of –ly Adverb in Washington Post and The Jakarta Post Articles” and “A Study on English Preposition in in Newsweek Headline News Issued from May 2005 – October 2005” as related studies because both of them take the data from headlines news and also the articles from news report such as magazine and newspaper. The writer also takes the third study “A Study on Grammatical Meanings of Finite Verb Phrases in The Jakarta Post Headline News Issued in January 2007” because this undergraduate thesis analyzes the finite verb phrases and almost similar with the writer’s main focus to analyze the tense choices in the verb phrases. From the studies, the writer knows that the news report has the terms which are different from the other kinds of writing. That is why the writer tries to analyze the significance of the tense choices in the headlines news which are taken from the Jakarta Post issued on November 1 – 30, 2007.

B. Review of Related Theories 1. Theory of Sentence Elements

Tenses are the characteristics of finite verbs, which are parts of a clause in a sentence. According to Warriner 1958: 27 a sentence is a group of words containing a verb and its subject and expressing a completed thought. Quirk et al 1972: 34 explain that a sentence generally can be divided into two parts called subject and predicate. The predicate is divided into four important elements called as the verb, the complement, the object, and the adverbial. Each sentence elements will be discussed more detail in the following paragraphs.

a. Subject

The subject of sentence has a close general relation to ‘what is being discussed’ Quirk et al, 1972: 34. It consists of noun or a noun equivalent and characteristically name, places, people, animals, concepts, for example: 1 She reads. 2 The jewelry is expensive. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI The subject of a sentence is a part which is said Young, 1958: 29. It occurs before the verb phrase in declarative clauses and immediately after the operator in questions. The subject of a sentence has a number and person concord where applicable with the verb phrase, and the examples are: 3 The students have completed the task. 4 Have the student completed the task?

b. Verb

Young 1958: 29 states that verb is the word that indicates action, state or condition, existence, or what is perceived by senses – touch, taste, hearing, seeing, and smelling. Asher and Simpson 1994: 5186 describe a verb as a member of the word class traditionally defined as a ‘doing’ word, denoting an action or states, for example knows, give, and broke. Verbs generally refer to actions, events and processes. There are two classes of verb forms. They are finite verb and non-finite verb. According to Harman 1950: 93 a finite verb is one which asserts or predicates and it is “limited” by person and number. A finite verb contains a form of the verb, showing tense distinction between past and present, and being associated with particular subject first, second, third person, singular or plural Jackson, 1982: 72, for example: 5 The dog runs. 6 I drive my motorcycle. 7 She slept in hotel yesterday. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI