THE ANALYSIS OF THE TENSE CHOICES IN THE JAKARTA POST HEADLINES NEWS ON NOVEMBER 1 - 30, 2007

THE ANALYSIS OF THE TENSE CHOICES

  IN THE JAKARTA POST HEADLINES NEWS ON NOVEMBER 1 - 30, 2007 AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra in English Letters

  By SUSTIANI

  Student Number: 034214047

ENGLISH LETTERS STUDY PROGRAMME DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS FACULTY OF LETTERS SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA 2008

THE ANALYSIS OF THE TENSE CHOICES

  IN THE JAKARTA POST HEADLINES NEWS ON NOVEMBER 1 - 30, 2007 AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra in English Letters

  By SUSTIANI

  Student Number: 034214047

ENGLISH LETTERS STUDY PROGRAMME DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS FACULTY OF LETTERS SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA 2008

  The Road Not Taken Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other . . .

• Robert Frost (1961)—

  To believe in your own thought, to believe that what is

  true for you in your private heart is true for all men

• --Ralph Waldo Emerson (1841)--

  Th is u n d e r g r a d u a t e t h e s is is d e d ic a t e d t o M y B e lo v e d P a r e n t s , M y B r o t h e r a n d S is t e r s , a n d a ls o

  Th e o n e w h o I Lo v e a n d Lo v e s m e m o r e

  

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Alhamdulillah, Ya Allah,Ya Rabbi, finally I could finish my undergraduate

thesis. My deepest gratitude goes to Allah SWT for the wonderful grace upon my

life and for guiding me in writing my undergraduate thesis.

  I would like, to thank Dr. Fr. B. Alip, M. Pd., M.A., my advisor, for his

guidance, incredible patience, suggestions, and the time that he has spent to

correct this thesis. I also would like to thank my co-advisor, Dra. Bernadine Ria

Lestari, M.S., for reading my undergraduate thesis and for the suggestions in order

to make it better.

  I dedicate this thesis for my beloved parents. I highly thank them for their

prayers and their patience in supporting my study (Thanks Mom and Dad, your

strict ways make me learn a lot of things ). I thank my sisters for their prayers,

supports, and helps, and also for my brother who teaches me how to “fight” in my

life. Many thanks also go to all my families, my grandmother, my uncles, my

aunts, my cousins, my nieces and my nephew. I thank them for the happiness,

love and laugh. I am very grateful that I can be the part of the family.

  I dedicate special thanks to “Hun”diarto Kurniawan who always supports

me and helps me stand up when I fell down. You are the one who I love and loves

me more, thanks for your love and your patience, you are a good listener who

gives me good advice too.

  Lots of gratitude go to Anna Fitrianti, S.S., M.Hum., who has become the

“third advisor” of this thesis writing process. My sincere appreciation is also

  

expressed to all of lecturers for their guidance and their time to share their

knowledge during my study and to all Sanata Dharma University’s staffs and

librarians, especially mbak Ninik in the secretariat of English Letters Department.

  I would like to express high appreciations to my best friends Maxi_Boim,

Yerry, Mbendol, Nyit-Nyit, dJatep, SuperBay, Bagor, Tyok, Ryan and also my

Lil_sister Woelan for their helps, their supports, and becoming my real friends

during my happiest and roughest days (From you all, I know that friends indeed

are friends in need, together in laugh and cry) . For We Won’t Pay crew, Prita,

Chubby, Wayan, Novi, Widhi, Ella, Dodik, Bhayank, Vallone and Rensi and the

others friends in ’03 class of English Letters, I thank them for giving me such a

beautiful friendship.

  Last but not least, I would like to thank Rinta Aribawa for the time that we shared within last few years, thanks for the prayers and for everything.

  Sustiani

  

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE ............................................................................................... i ..................................................................................... ii

  APPROVAL PAGE ................................................................................ iii

  ACCEPTANCE PAGE

MOTTO PAGE ............................................................................................ iv

DEDICATION PAGE ................................................................................. v ACKNOWLEGEMENTS ........................................................................... vi

  ............................................................................ viii TABLE OF CONTENTS

  ....................................................................................... x LIST OF TABLES ABSTRACT ................................................................................................. xi ABSTRAK ................................................................................................... xii

  ............................................................... 1

  CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION .................................................................

  1 A. Background of the Study B. Problem Formulation ......................................................................

  3 C. Objectives of the Study ....................................................................

  4 D. Benefits of the Study ........................................................................

  4 ..........................................................................

  5 E. Definition of Terms

  

CHAPTER II: THEORETICAL REVIEW .............................................. 7

A. Review of Related Studies ............................................................... 7 B. Review of Related Theories ............................................................

  9

1. Theory of Sentence Elements ........................................................

  9

  

a. Subject ..................................................................................... 9

  

b. Verb ......................................................................................... 10

  

c. Object ....................................................................................... 11

  

d. Complement ............................................................................. 11

  

e. Adverbial .................................................................................. 12

2. Theory on Sentence Structure ........................................................

  12

3. Theory on Tenses, Aspect and Mood ............................................

  17

  

a. Present Tense ........................................................................... 19

  

b. Past Tense ................................................................................ 24

4. Theory on News .............................................................................

  28 a. The News Story Elements ........................................................

  28

i. The Lead .......................................................................... 28

ii. The Time Element ............................................................ 29

iii. Specific Information ........................................................ 29

iv. Sources ............................................................................. 29

v. Attribution ........................................................................ 30

b. The Characteristic of News ......................................................

  31

  

c. Headline ................................................................................... 32

  

d. Headline News ......................................................................... 33

...................................................................

  36 C. Theoretical Framework

  

CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY ........................................................... 39

A. Object of the Study ........................................................................... 39 B. Method of the Study ........................................................................ 41

1. Data Collection ..... ........................................................................

  43

2. Data Analysis ........ ........................................................................

  44 a. Identifying the Types of Tense ..............................................

  44

  b. Identifying the Grammatical Reasons of Choosing the Tense

  45 RESULT ......................................................

  46 CHAPTER IV: ANALYSIS A.

   The Type of Tenses in The Jakarta Post Headline News .............. 49

1. Simple Present ...............................................................................

  51

2. Present Progressive ........................................................................

  60

3. Present Perfect ...............................................................................

  62

4. Simple Past ....................................................................................

  65

5. Past Perfect ....................................................................................

  72

6. Past Progressive .............................................................................

  75 B . The Grammatical Reasons of the Tense Choices .........................

  76

1. Simple Present ...............................................................................

  77

2. Present Progressive ........................................................................

  89

3. Present Perfect ...............................................................................

  92

4. Simple Past ....................................................................................

  95

  5. Past Perfect .................................................................................... 100

  6. Past Progressive ............................................................................. 102 ................................................................... 103

  CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................ 107 .............................................................................................. 110

  APPENDIX List of Simple Present Tense Clauses in the Headlines ........................... 110 List of Simple Present Tense Clauses in the Articles .............................. 110 List of Present Progressive Tense Clauses in the Articles ....................... 126 List of Present Perfect Tense Clauses in the Articles ............................... 128 List of Simple Past Tense Clauses in the Headlines ................................. 132 List of Simple Past Tense Clauses in the Articles .................................... 132 List of Past Progressive Tense Clauses in the Articles ............................. 167 List of Past Perfect Tense Clauses in the Articles .................................... 168

  

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. The Types of Tense and Their Occurences in the Headlines..

  49 Table 2. The Types of Tense and Their Occurences in the Articles of the Headline News .................................................................

  49 Table 3. The Variants of Present Tense and the Distributions in the Headline ...........................................................................

  50 Table 4. The Variants of Present Tense and the Distributions in the Articles of Headline News ..............................................

  51 Table 5. The Types of Finite Verbs in the Simple Present Tense Clauses in the Headlines ...........................................................

  56 Table 6. The Types of Finite Verbs in the Simple Present Tense Clauses in the Articles ...............................................................

  57 Table 7. The Variants of Past Tense and the Distributions in the Articlesof the Headline News ....................................................

  65 Table 8. The types of Finite Verbs in the Simple Past Tense Clauses in the Articles .............................................................................

  69 Table 9. The Grammatical Reasons of the Choosing Simple Present Tense in the Clauses of the Whole Samples ............................

  77 Table 10. The Grammatical Meanings of the Simple Present Tense In the Present Speech Acts ........................................................

  78 Table 11. The Grammatical Meanings of the Simple Present Tense Which Indicate Past Speech Acts .............................................

  85 Table 12. The Grammatical Meanings of the Present Progressive Tense 90 Table 13. The Grammatical Meanings of the Present Perfect Tense in the Clauses ..............................................................................

  93 Table 14. The Grammatical Meanings of the Simple Past Tense in the Clauses ..............................................................................

  96 Table 15. The Grammatical Meanings of the Past Perfect Tense in the Clauses .............................................................................. 102

  

ABSTRACT

SUSTIANI. The Analysis of the Tense Choices in The Jakarta Post Headlines

Yogyakarta: Department of English Letters, News on November 1 - 30, 2007.

  Faculty of Letters, Sanata Dharma University, 2008.

  As the basic knowledge in English language, tenses has an important role

because by learning tenses, we could understand the correspondence between the

form of verb and our concept of time. That is why the choosing of tense in news

writing is also important. Basically there are only two kinds of tense, present and

past, but each tense can be in the simple form or can be combined with either

progressive aspect or perfective aspect. Related with the statements above, the

analysis will be focused on the types of tense and also the grammatical meanings

of the chosen tense in The Jakarta Post Headlines News on November 1 – 30,

2007.

  In this research, there are two problems which are formulated to guide the

study. The first problem deals with the tense choices that are used in The Jakarta

Post Headlines news on November 1 – 30, 2007. And the second problem deals

with the grammatical reasons for choosing those tenses.

  This study is a descriptive one, and the method employed in this study

covered two stages. First, the data collections, the writer identified and made a list

of finite clauses and divided them based on the type of tenses then calculated the

distributions. Second, the data analysis, the writer did the analysis in line with the

problems stated in chapter I. Answering the first problem, the writer identified the

types of tense and described them. Answering the second problem, the writer

analyzed the grammatical meanings of the chosen tense.

  Through this study, the writer discovers some findings that can be stated

as follow; firstly, the past tense forms are used more frequently with 59.82% of

the occurrence than the present tense with 40.18%. The past tense clauses are

dominated by the simple past form 92.94%, the past perfect form is 5.33% and the

past progressive is 1.74%. While the present tense clauses are also dominated by

the simple present 79.70%, the present perfect is 14.76% and the present

progressive is 5.54%.

  The second finding is that these types of tense may indicate some

grammatical reasons. Predominantly, the simple past tense form is used to convey

actions that take place at particular point of time in the past, the past perfect form

is used to convey an action which extends in the past and seen from the past

current relevance and the past progressive tense is used to show the limited

duration of actions in the past. While the present tense form, predominantly, is

used to indicate present actions/ present statements, present perfect form is used to

indicate actions that went over time in the past and that is completed with the

moment of speaking, and the present progressive is used to indicate actions which

are in process/ in progress.

  

ABSTRAK

SUSTIANI. The Analysis of the Tense Choices in The Jakarta Post Headlines

Yogyakarta: Jurusan Sastra Inggris, Fakultas News on November 1 – 30, 2007.

  Sastra, Universitas Sanata Dharma, 2008.

  Dalam bahasa Inggris, tenses berperan sangat penting, karena dengan

mempelajari tenses, kita dapat mengetahui hubungan antara bentuk kata kerja dan

konsep waktu dari kegiatan tersebut. Oleh karena itu, pemilihan tenses (penunjuk

waktu) dalam berita juga sangat penting. Pada dasarnya hanya ada dua tenses,

past (lampau) dan present (sekarang), tapi tenses tersebut dapat berbentuk

sederhana ataupun dikombinasikan dengan aspek perfektif dan progresif.

  

Berhubungan dengan pernyataan di atas, analisis ini berfokus pada jenis-jenis

tenses dan juga arti-arti gramatikal dari tenses yang digunakan dalam berita

utama harian The Jakara Post di bulan November 2007 dari tanggal 1 sampai

tanggal 30.

  Dalam penelitian ini ada dua masalah yang dirumuskan untuk memandu

pembelajaran. Permasalahan pertama berkenaan dengan pemilihan tenses di berita

utama harian The Jakarta Post di bulan November 2007 dari tanggal 1 sampai

tanggal 30. Permasalahan yang kedua berkenan dengan alasan gramatikal dari

pemilihan tenses tersebut.

  Penelitian ini adalah penelitian deskriptif. Penulis melakukan dua tahap

dalam penelitian ini. Pertama pengumpulan data, penulis mengidentifikasi dan

membuat daftar klausa-klausa dengan kata kerja finite dan membaginya

berdasarkan jenis tenses lalu menghitung jumlahnya. Kedua, analisis data, penulis

melakukan analisis sesuai dengan rumusan masalah yang terdapat di bab I. Untuk

menjawab permasalahan pertama, penulis mengidentifikasi jenis dari tenses dan

menjelaskannya. Untuk menjawab permasalahan kedua, penulis menganalisa arti

gramatikal dari jenis-jenis tenses yang digunakan.

  Hasil penelitian menujukan bahwa (1) past tense (lampau) lebih banyak

digunakan dengan prosentase 59.82% dari pada present tense (sekarang)

40.18%. Bentuk lampau didominasi oleh bentuk simple (sederhana) 92.94%, past

perfect 5.33%, dan past progressive 1.74%. Sedangkan present tense (sekarang)

juga didominasi oleh bentuk simple (sederhana) 79.70%, present perfect 14.76%

dan present progressive 5.54%. (2) Jenis-jenis tense dapat menunjukan beberapa

alasan gramatikal. Secara garis besar, bentuk simple past tense digunakan untuk

mengungkapkan kejadian yang yang berlangsung di satu waktu di masa lalu , past

perfect digunakan untuk mengungkapkan kejadian yang berlangsung pada suatu

periode di masa lalu dan dan dilihat dari saat itu juga, dan past progressive

digunakan untuk menunjukan kejadian yang berlangsung pada dalam waktu yang

terbatas di masa lalu. Sedangkan bentuk present tense secara umum digunakan

untuk mengindikasikan kejadian ataupun pernyataan di masa sekarang, present

perfect digunakan untuk mengindikasikan kejadian yang berlangsung dimasa lalu

dan selesai saat waktu pembicaraan, dan present progressive digunakan untuk

menunjukan kejadian yang sedang berlangsung.

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION A. Background of the Study According to Bloomfield (1962: 3) language plays an important role in our

  

life because we need language to communicate with other. Language has been

studied in a scientific way since the ancient times by careful and comprehensive

observation. There are many kinds of language that people use in this world. All

of them have their own characteristics which differentiate one from the other. One

of those languages, that become an international language, is English. This

language has commonly used including in Indonesia. Now days, English has

become the second language in Indonesia after Indonesian. People use English not

only for spoken language but also as written language. The using of English as

written language can be seen in the application letters and in mass media such as

magazines and also newspapers.

  Both of the English spoken and written languages must follow the rule of

grammar in order to avoid the grammatical mistakes. In constructing and

analyzing a sentence, we should concern about the verb. Based on Explaining

English Grammar , the most basic element in an English sentence is the verb

(Yule, 1998: 54). The verb is the word that indicates action, state or condition,

existence, or what is perceived by senses – touch, taste, hearing, seeing, and

smelling (Young, 1958: 29). It generally refers to actions, events, and processes.

  The verbs have some different forms. If we want to describe the different

forms of the verb, we need to talk about tense. Tense is a verb form that expresses

actions which occur on certain time in the past, present and future (Curme, 1931:

354). In other words, tense often has to do with the position of a situation in the

relation with the time of the speech. For example, in the sentence, When I met

him, John had lived in Paris for 10 years , the past perfect form indicates that the

speech is in the present time but the situation of When I met him relevant to a

point in the past.

  In English, the using of tenses is very important. As the basic knowledge

in English language, tenses has an important role because by learning tenses, we

could understand the correspondence between the form of verb and our concept of

time (Quirk et al, 1985: 40). There were two main tenses in English-present and

past. Each tense can have a simple form: and each can be combined with either

progressive aspect or perfective aspect, or both (Close, 1977: 241). From those

combinations, English has many kinds of tense variants.

  The using of tense variants can be seen in the written language such as a

news report. A news report is a right and objective announcement from facts that

have values and have just happened that can attract readers of certain newspapers

(Maulsby as cites in Sam Abede Pareno, 2003: 6). This news report is usually

found in a newspaper and magazines. In a newspaper, the chosen of tenses is also

an important thing because the typical news report is designed to focus on recent

changes and the current situation (Yule, 1998: 71). From the choices of tense we

could know the location of the actions/events of the news in time.

  Many kinds of tense variants are used in writing a news report. Even

though the news commonly happens in the past time, sometimes in a news report,

the report is written in a present tense and not always in past tense. The tense

choices do not always follow the formal English rule. According to Berner R.

  Thomas, The formal rule on sequence of tenses states that when a direct quotation is paraphrased, verbs are changed one degree that is from present to past. Journalists live by the paraphrase, and if they were to follow this rule, they would create inaccurate news stories, for by shifting tense, the journalist would be changing fact. (1992: 84) Knowing that the tense choices are very important in a news report, the

writer would like to analyze about the tense choices from The Jakarta Post. The

  

Jakarta Post is a daily English-language newspaper in Indonesia. It was first

published in 1983 and becomes the largest English-Language newspaper in

Indonesia. The writer focused in analyzing the headlines news because the

headline news is the most important story of today’s newspaper (Reddick, 1941:

250). And the writer takes the headlines news which were published on November

1 – 30, 2007 as the sample of the data.

B. Problem Formulation

  From the background of the study and also the problem limitation above, the problem of this research can be stated as follows;

  1. What tenses are used in The Jakarta Post headlines news on November 1

• – 30, 2007?

  2. What are the grammatical reasons of choosing those tenses?

  C. Objective of the Study As the arrangement of the problem formulations, the goal of this research

can be formulated as follows; the first is to find what kinds of tenses that

commonly appear in The Jakarta Post headlines news. Basically there are only

two kinds of tense, past and present, but when the tenses are combined with the

progressive aspect or perfective aspect there will be 12 combinations of English

tenses. In here the writer would mention the tense variants which are found in The

Jakarta Post headlines news and give the examples which are taken from the

headlines news. The writer also mentions the percentage distribution of each tense

variant which appear in the headlines news.

  The second objective is to identify the reason of using those tenses in

referring the meaning of the sentence and also to show the occurrence of each

grammatical meaning. A tense variant conveys a different grammatical meaning

from the others and sometimes a tense variant may refer to 2 or 3 meanings. For

example a simple past tense can be used to give description about a definite single

completed event/action in the past, an event with duration that applied in the past

and no longer applies in the present, habitual or repeated action/ event in the past,

and etc.

  D. Benefits of the Study Some of the benefits of this study are to give knowledge to the readers

about the kinds of tenses. Through the analysis and the examples which are given,

the readers are able to identify the tense variants in the sentences especially in the

  

news report and the reader will know what kind of tenses which frequently

appears in the news writing. As the other advantages, the reader can also know

about the grammatical meanings of each tense which are usually used in the news

writing.

E. The Definition Terms The terms that are used in this research are verbs, tense and news.

  1. Verb 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. There are two classes of verbs forms. They are finite verb and non-finite verb. A finite verb contains a finite form of the verb, showing tense distinction between past and present, and being associated with particular subject (first, second, third person, singular or plural). A non-finite verb consists non-finite forms of the verb i.e. the infinitive form (usually with to), the present participle, or the past participle (Jackson, 1982: 72).

  2. Tense According to Curme tense is a verb form that expresses actions which occur on certain time in the past, present and future. Each tense can have a simple form and can be combined with more complex forms. Tenses express time from the standpoint of the moment in which the speaker is speaking without reference to some other fact (1931: 354). Tense is any of the form of a verb that may be used to indicate the time of the action or stated, expressed by the verb (Hornby, 1995: 1231).

  3. News As cited in New Survey of Journalism (Mott, 1969: 49), M. Lyle Spencer states that news can be defined as any accurate fact or idea that will interest a large numbers of readers. William S. Maulsby (as cited in Sam Abede Pareno, 2003: 6) also states that news may be defined as an accurate, unbiased account of the significant facts of a timely happening that is of the interest to the readers of the newspaper that prints the account. And according to Erie C. Hepwood (as cited in Sam Abede Pareno, 2003: 6) news is the first report of significant events which have interest for the public.

CHAPTER II REVIEW OF LITERATURE In this chapter, the writer takes three studies which are related to the

  

analysis of this study. There are also some theories that are essential to answer the

problem formulations. The theoretical framework shows the relation among those

related theories that will help the writer to analyze the tense choices in the Jakarta

Post headlines news on November 1 – 30, 2007.

A. Review of Related Studies

  There are three studies which are taken as related studies. Three of them

are the undergraduate theses of the students from Sanata Dharma University. The

first related study is “A Study of –ly Adverb in Washington Post and The Jakarta

Post Articles” . This study was written by Dionisius Pimarianto in 2005. This

undergraduate thesis focused in analyzing the kinds of –ly adverbs and the

positions of the adverb in a clause. From the analysis we may conclude that there

are 5 kinds of adverb which are used in the articles, and by looking at the

distributions, the adverbs always occur in the middle position and in the final

position. The adverbs never occur in the initial position.

  The second study is “A Study on English Preposition in in Newsweek

Headline News Issued from May 2005 – October 2005” . Elisa Widyastuti wrote

this undergraduate thesis in 2006. The aim of this study is to know the

construction and the meanings of English preposition in in Newsweek headline

  

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.

  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.

  A non-finite verb is one which lacks the power to assert (Harman, 1950:

93). It is not limited by the person or the number of the subject. According to

Jackson, a non-finite verb consists a form of the verb i.e. the infinitive form

(usually with to), the present participle, or the past participle, for example: (8) I want to go home. (9) Going along the road, we sang. (10) Covered with confusion, I left the room. The non-fine verbs in sentence (8), (9), and (10) are go, going, and covered.

  c. Object An object is a noun or noun equivalent (e.g. a clause) which is directed by

the actions of the verb, or to which a preposition indicates some relations

  

(Hornby, 1974: 557). Both Quirk (1973: 13) and Jackson (1982: 84) distinguish

two types of object: direct and indirect object. The indirect object normally refers

to a person, more particularly the person who is the recipient or who benefits from

the action. For example: (11) She gives me a book.

  The indirect object tends to be done for or received by the direct object.

The direct object is a word or group of words to which the verb carries the action

from the subject. For example in sentence (11), the direct object is a book while

the indirect object is me.

  d. Complement Mallery indicates complement as a word that completes the meaning of

verb or predicate (1944: 43). Quirk et al (1972: 37) also distinguishes two types of

  

complement: the subject complement and the object complement. The subject

complement has a straightforward relation to the subjects of their respective

sentences. While the object complement has a similar relation to a direct object.

The examples are: (12) Anne is the winner.

  (13) Tom made her the winner .

In sentence (12) the winner is the subject complement while in sentence

(13) function as the object complement.

e. Adverbial

  The adverbial function is filled by an adverb (including adverb phrase),

noun phrase, prepositional phrase, finite verb clause, non-finite verb clause, and

verbless clause (Quirk et al, 1972: 420). Leech states that adverbials usually tell

something extra about the action, happening, or state which are described by the

rest of the sentence (1975: 197). Some of the examples are: (14) She hurried across the field.

  (15) We have to go before it’s too late.

2. Theory on Sentence Structure

  Tense has an important position in English sentence structure. The term of

tense always influences the form of verb. By knowing the English sentence

structure, we can know the term of tense which is used in a sentence. According

to Chomsky (as cited in Dwijatmoko, 2002: 55) an ordinary clause basically

  

consists of three elements such as a Complementizer Phrase (CP), Inflection

Phrase (IP), and Verb Phrase (VP).

  According Dwijatmoko (2002: 55), a complementizer subcategorizes for a

sentence (S) and equals to an Inflection Phrase (IP). The concept of

complementizer is needed to label the presence of that, whether/if, and for in a

sub-clauses and the absence of those complementizers result ungrammatical

sentences, like in examples below: (16) Mr. Hayes suggests that Holy see a doctor.