AN ANALYSIS OF SENTENCE STRUCTURE IN READER’S DIGEST MAGAZINE ARTICLE “HIGH-TECH BREAKTHROUGHS FOR
EYESIGHT”
THESIS
By:
LINGGA AGUNG TRI HANGGARA NIM: 09360006
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF MUHAMMADIYAH MALANG
AN ANALYSIS OF SENTENCE STRUCTURE IN READER’S DIGEST MAGAZINE ARTICLE “HIGH-TECH BREAKTHROUGHS FOR
EYESIGHT”
THESIS
This Thesis is Submitted to Meet One of the Requirements to Achieve Sarjana Degree in English Education
By:
LINGGA AGUNG TRI HANGGARA NIM. 09360006
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION UNIVERSITY OF MUHAMMADIYAH MALANG
This thesis written by Lingga Agung Tri Hanggara was approved on April 30, 2014.
By:
Advisor II, Advisor I,
MOTTO
Life is learning. Learn to survive, learn to live a life and
learn to enjoy your life.
DEDICATION:
I dedicated this thesis to
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Alhamdulillah, all praises are due to Allah SWT, who gives His blessing,
guidance and merciful in my life, then finally I could finish this thesis.
Furthermore, I would like to express my deepest thank to Rahmawati
Khadijah Maro S.Pd M.PEd and Santi Prastiyowati S.Pd for their advice, correction,
motivation and ideas in guiding my thesis until finished. My gratitude also goes to all
lectures of English Department in the University of Muhammadiyah Malang for
knowledge that may worthwhile.
Indeed, I would like to thank to my beloved Mother (Suparmi), Father (Sigit
Muntarto), and brothers (Swandika Fajar Sujatmiko and Arif Widya Permana), who
always give me support and prayers so that this thesis could be completed. For the
one who always give spirit to finish my thesis “Nevi” thanks for your Love.
To all my close friends at English Department (Johan, Tri Yuli, Hardi, Ririn,
Irma, Inof, Dian, Lina, Miranda, Nissa, Agustin, Icha, and Febri) thanks for your
togetherness and kindness, help and support. And for all my friends who cannot be
mentioned one by one, thank you very much.
Malang, April 30, 2014 The Researcher,
AN ANALYSIS OF SENTENCE STRUCTURES IN “HIGH-TECH BREAKTHROUGH FOR EYESIGHT” ARTICLE ON READER’S DIGEST
MAGAZINE ABSTRACT
Magazine as one of written media can be fresh material to students in learning English. By using the magazine, the students can learn from many articles to get information and add their knowledge. Understanding the sentence structures is very important, especially on getting knowledge and information. A sentence is a set of words expressing statement and usually contains a subject and a verb. There are four types of sentence structures. Those are simple sentence, compound sentence, complex sentence, and compound-complex sentence. In this study, the research problems consist of (1) how sentence structures are portrayed in tree diagram “High-tech
Breakthroughs for Eyesight” article on Reader’s Digest magazine? And (2) what types of sentence structures exist in “High-tech Breakthroughs for Eyesight” article on Reader’s Digest magazine? The aim of this study is to describe sentence structures
through tree diagram and to figure out the types of sentence structures in “High-Tech
Breakthrough for Eyesight” article on Reader’s Digest magazine published March 2014.
The research design which was used in this study was descriptive qualitative
research. The object of the study was “High-Tech Breakthrough for Eyesight” article on Reader’s Digest magazine published on March 2014. The data were all of the sentences in this article. The researcher used document as the instrument. In data collection, the researcher read the selected article carefully four times to get familiar with the content of the article and made some important notes to obtaining the data. Furthermore, in data analysis, the researcher did some processes. Those were drawing all of sentences based on tree diagram theory, classifying the types of sentence structures, and concluding the result.
In conclusion, all four types of sentence structures were found in this article. Those are simple sentence, compound sentence, complex sentence, and compound-complex sentence. The simple sentences were more frequently used than the others
types of sentence structures in “High-Tech Breakthrough for Eyesight” article on
Reader’s Digest magazine.
Keywords: (sentence structures, article, magazine)
Malang, April 30, 2014 The Advisor 1, The Researcher,
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE 2.1Introduction to Linguistics ……… 8
2.3.2 The Functions of Sentences ... 16
CHAPTER IV: RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 4.1 Research Finding ... 37
4.1.1 Drawing Sentences Based on the Theory... 37
4.2 Discussion ... 58
CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS
5.1 Conclusions ... 61
5.2 Suggestions ... 62
REFERENCES ... 64 APPENDIXES
REFERENCES
Ary, Donald. Jacobs, Lucy Cheser, etc. 2010. Introduction to Research in Education 8th Edition. USA: Nelson Education, Ltd.
Assegaf, Djafar. 1983. Jurnalistik Masa Kini. Ghalia Indonesia. Jakarta.
Baran, J. Stanley. 2008. Pengantar Komunikasi Massa. Jakarta: Erlangga, Edisi 5th. Beare, Kenneth. 2014. What are adverbs?. Retrieved from http://esl.about.com on
December 18th, 2013.
Burton-Roberts, N. and Spencer, A. 2001. English Syntax and Argumentation. Bas Arts: University College London, 2nd edition.
Carnie, Andrew. 2001. Syntax. Oxford: The University of Arizona.
Chomsky, Noam. 2002. Syntactic Structures. Berlin. Jakarta.
Collins, William. 2009. World English Dictionary. Retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com on October 24th, 2013.
Cruz, Santa. 2014. Linguistics. Retrieved from http://linguistics.ucsc.edu/ on April 17th, 2014
Fromkin, V. Rodman, R. and Hyams, N. 2003. An Introduction to Language. United States: Thomson, 7th edition.
Harris, Bronwyn. 2013. What is Sentence Structure?. Retrieved from http://www.wisegeek.org on October 29th, 2013.
Kroeger, R Paul. 2005. Analyzing Grammar an Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
MacFadyen, Heather. 2013. The part of Speech. Retrieved from http://www.writingcentre.uottawa.ca on December 25th, 2013. Magginson, David. 2013. Building Sentence. Retrieved from
http://www.writingcentre.uottawa.ca on December 25th, 2013. Marc. 2011. Formal vs Informal Writing. Retrieved from
http://blog.ezinearticles.com on April 13th, 2014
Oswald, and Price. 2006. Observational Research. Retrieved from http://psych.csufresno.edu March 18th, 2014
Radford, Andrew. 2003. Syntax: A Minimalist Introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Simmons, L. Robin. 2014. The Complete Sentence. Retrieved from http://www.chompchomp.com on May 2nd, 2014
Scott, Tom. 2012. Research Object. Retrieved from http://derivadow.com on March 16th, 2014.
Trask, R.L. 1999. Key Concept in Language and Linguistics. Brighton: Routledge.
1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
This chapter will discuss the background of the study, the statement of the
problems, the purpose of the study, the significance of the study, the scope and the
limitation, and the definition of the key terms.
1.1. The Background of the Study
Every human being speaks everyday by using language. People use language
to express inner thoughts and emotions, to make sense of complex and abstract
thought, to learn to communicate with others, to fulfill our wants and needs. They use
language to produce phrase or sentence then use it to tell each other in order to know
what they speak about.
Collins (2003) states that a sentence is sequence of words that capable of
standing alone to make an assertion, ask a question, or give a command, which
usually consist of a subject and a predicate containing a finite verb. A sentence is the
basic unit of language which expresses a complete thought. A complete sentence has
at least a subject and a main verb to state a complete thought. Furthermore, a subject
is the noun that is doing the main verb. The main verb is the verb that the subject is
doing.
According to Megginson (2013), there are four different sentence types
according to the number of clauses they contain namely simple, compound, complex,
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no dependent clause. A compound sentence consists of two or more independent
clauses (or simple sentences) joined by coordinating conjunctions like "and," "but,"
and "or. A complex sentence includes one independent statement and at least one
dependent statement, which cannot stand alone. A compound-complex sentence
contains three or more clauses at least two independent clauses and one or more
subordinate clauses.
When discussing about sentence structure, it is explained more deeply in
syntax because syntax is often equated with the study of sentence structure. Harris
(2013) defines that sentence structure is the order and arrangement of the clauses in a
sentence, which is a group of words that express a complete thought. In linguistics,
the term syntax comes from the Ancient Greek syntaxis, a verbal noun which literally
means „arrangement‟ or setting out together. Traditionally, it refers to the branch of
grammar dealing with the ways in which words are arranged to show connections of
meaning within the sentence, Radford (2003). So, syntax is concerned with the ways
in which words can be combined together to form phrases and sentences.
Analyzing sentence is the process of identifying subjects, predicates, direct
and indirect objects and the various types of clauses and phrases. The wrong structure
of sentence in conversation can make the communication lack of effectiveness. In
order to make effective communication, we have to know about understanding of the
constructions of grammar, of what a rule are, of what is accepted usage and how to
3
Moreover, sentences can be analyzed by using chinese box and tree diagram.
Chinese box and tree diagram are the way of representation of grammatical structure:
clauses and groups in sentences. Both of them contain exactly the same information,
but tree diagram is much easier to interpret the form of sentence. Sometimes the
people find ambiguous sentence and have difficulty in understanding the meaning of
the sentence, such as, when read the foreign magazine, by using a tree diagram to
analyze sentence structure, they can easy to understand and get the point of that
sentence.
Magazine is one of written media which is usually published periodically to
get some information. According to Baran (2008), there are two kinds of magazine as
mass media: they are printed magazine and online magazine. Printed magazine is
chosen in this study because it is superior to online magazine when the online
publication is unable to reach the target reader due to them not being online.
According to Assegaff (1983) printed magazine is divided into fifteen categories.
They are pictorial, children magazines, news magazines, culture magazines, monthly
magazines, scientific magazines, religious magazines, family magazine typical
magazines, fashion magazines, company magazines, teen magazines, essence article
magazines, literary magazines, and women magazines. Family magazine is chosen in
this study because this magazine contains about essays for the whole family, from
reading light for children to households, such as Reader’s Digest magazine.
Reader's Digest magazine is one type of family magazines and the world‟s
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Reader's Digest reach an additional 40 million people in more than 70 countries, with
49 editions in 21 languages. There are many types of Reader’s Digest magazine, such
as, Reader’s Digest Asia, Reader’s Digest Australia, Reader’s Digest Canada,
Reader’s Digest Arab, etc. Reader’s Digest Asia spread over in many Asian countries
including Indonesia. Therefore, the researcher chooses Reader’s Digest Asia in
analyzing sentence structure.
By location, the researcher chooses Reader’s Digest Asia in analyzing
sentence structures. In this magazine there are many rubrics, they are “Have Your
Say”, “Letter from the Editor”, “Unbelievable”, “Everyday Kitchen”, “Health Smart”,
“My Story”, “Power of Good”, “Smarts Animal”, “Puzzles”, “Trivia and Word
Power” and many more. The researcher chooses “Health Smart” rubric because it has
important issue that contain about newest health research article. In “health Smart”
rubric there is article entitle “High-tech Breakthroughs for Eyesight” which talks
about a new technological invention for help eye disease. This article uses more
various types of sentences and many words are difficult to understand for common
people, especially assimilation in the field of health and technology. So, the
researcher is interested in analyzing sentence structures that will be portrayed in tree
diagram to help the readers to understand what the article talks about easily.
In the previous research, Ginting (2009) also used tree diagram in her thesis
entitled “An Analysis of Sentence Structure in Tennessee William‟s A Street Car
Named Desire”. She found that 54,96% or 205 sentences is simple sentence. Second,
29,69% or 107 sentences is complex sentence. Third, 9,38% or 35 sentences is
5
sentence. While the previous research focuses on drama script, this study highlights
on an article in Reader’s Digest magazine.
1.2. Statement of Problem
Based on the background of the study, the problems of the study can be
formulated as follows:
1. How sentence structures are portrayed in tree diagram “High-tech Breakthroughs for Eyesight”article on Reader’s Digest magazine?
2. What types of sentence structures exist in “High-tech Breakthroughs for
Eyesight” article on Reader’s Digest magazine?
1.3. Purpose of Study
Based on the problem above, the purposes of the study can stated as follows:
1. To describe sentence structures through tree diagram “High-tech
Breakthroughs for Eyesight” article on Reader’s Digestmagazine.
2. To figure out types of sentence structures exist in “High-tech
Breakthroughs for Eyesight” article on Reader’s Digestmagazine.
1.4. Significance of Study
Theoretically, this study can give a contribution for the English grammar
lecturers in university. The lecturers can teach students how sentences are constructed
and how different types of sentences are formed. It also shows how to punctuate each
type of sentence correctly and how to combine different sentence types for effective
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Practically, firstly, this study is useful for the students who learn about
sentence structures on morph syntax subject. Secondly, English magazine can be used
as a learning media for the university students who take English subject because
article in the magazine usually contain many words that can be analyzed in sentence
structures. Nowadays, magazine as one of the information centers can be a fresh
material that motivates the students in learning English.
1.5. Scope and Limitation
There are many articles on Reader’s Digest Magazine published on March
2014. The scope of this analysis is “High-tech Breakthroughs for Eyesight” article.
The researcher limits this analysis on the sentence structure portrayed in tree diagram
and the type of sentence structure.
1.6. Definition of Key Terms
1. Sentence Structure: is the order and arrangement of the clauses in a sentence, which is a group of words that express a complete thought (Harris, 2013). In
this study, they are categorized into four kinds: simple sentence, compound
sentence, complex sentence, and compound-complex sentence. To find out of
types of sentence structure, the researcher uses tree diagram based on Carnies‟
Theory.
2. Syntax: is the study of the principles and processes by which sentences are constructed in particular languages. Syntactic investigation of a given
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device of some sort for producing the sentences of the language under
analysis (Chomsky, 2002).
3. Reader’s Digest: is an American family magazine and distributed in Indonesia
by Media Tool International Company since in 2004. Reader’s Digest
magazine is published worldwide. There are Reader’s Digest Asia, which is
published in Asia, Reader’s Digest Australia, which is published in Australia,
Reader’s Digest Canada, which is published in Canada, and some more
(http://www.rdasia.com).
4. Tree Diagram: is systematic diagram to represent sentence structure by marking which sequences of words in a sentence are its constituent phrases. It
consists of multiple choices or sub-parts, which come under one broad
