ELLIPSIS AND AMBIGUITY FOUND IN THE TWEETS ON TWITTER.

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ELLIPSIS AND AMBIGUITY FOUND IN

THE TWEETS

ON TWITTER

A THESIS

Submitted to the English Applied Linguistics Study Program in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of

Magister Humaniora

By:

IRMA SARI NASUTION Registration Number: 809111034

ENGLISH APPLIED LINGUISTICS STUDY PROGRAM

POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL

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ELLIPSIS AND AMBIGUITY FOUND IN

THE TWEETS

ON TWITTER

A THESIS

Submitted to the English Applied Linguistics Study Program in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of

Magister Humaniora

By:

IRMA SARI NASUTION Registration Number: 809111034

ENGLISH APPLIED LINGUISTICS STUDY PROGRAM

POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL

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ABSTRACT

Nasution, Irma Sari, Registration Number, 809111034, Ellipsis and Ambiguity Found in the Tweets on Twitter. A Thesis. English Applied Linguistics Study Program. Postgraduate School, State University of Medan. 2014.

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ii

ABSTRAK

Nasution, Irma Sari, Nomor Registrasi, 809111034, Ellipsis dan Ambiguitas ditemukan dalam Kicauan Twitter. Tesis. Linguistik Terapan Bahasa Inggris, Program Pascasarjana, Universitas Negeri Medan. 2014.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all the writer would like to express her very special gratitude to

Allah SWT, the Almighty His Blessing and Mercy, until this can be completed in

due course. It should be admitted that a number of people have directly helped the

process in many varied and thought provoking ways. She would like to express

sincere gratitude to them.

Her thankfulness is directed to Prof. Dr. Busmin Gurning, M.Pd, as the First

Adviser and Head of English Applied Linguistic Study Program whose advice,

encouragement, constructive criticisms, and suggestions have been a feature of the

writing process from its very beginning.

Next, Dr. T. Thyrhaya Zein, M.A, her second adviser, deserves her special

gratitude for being so helpful in assisting her to build up ideas and thoughts to

finish up this thesis.

She would like to extend her sincere thankfulness to Dr. Sri Minda Murni,

M.S, the secretary of the department, for her helps in all administration matters

and deep mental support and all the lecturer who have taught a lot of knowledge

to her.

To Prof. Amrin Saragih, M.A, Ph.D, Dr. Rahmad Husein, M.A, and Dr. Sri

Minda Murni, M. S, as reviewers and examiners for their valuable feedback,

To her lovely parents, Drs. H. Syaiful Bahri Nst and Hj. Warnidah Lubis,

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brothers and sisters M. Faisal Ansari Nst, M.Pd, and Latifah Nst, S.Pd. for their

full support, endless love, prayers, and motivation in carry out this academic task.

Finally, her very special thanks is directed to her beloved husband, Putra

Kamal Sidik, S.H, and dearest son Akhtar Al-Farabi Kamal for the very special

love, care, encouragement, understanding and motivation given to her for the

success of her study, and to all of her friends in LTBI (XVII) class A.

May Allah SWT Bless Us !

Medan, August 2014

The Writer,

Irma Sari Nasution

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List of Tables

Table Page

2.2 Yes/No Questions Ellipsis…..…..….………...……….18

4.1 Three Types of Ellipsis………...……….…40

4.2 Percentage of Ellipsis in The Tweets on Twitter....………43

4.3. Types of Nominal Ellipsis Found in The Tweets on Twitter..………44

4.4 Types of Verbal Ellipsis Found in The Tweets on Twitter..………..…….50

4.5 Types of Clausal Ellipsis Found in The Tweets on Twitter………55

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1 CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 The Background of the Study

People in carrying out all activities always involve language as a means to

interact with each other. The main function of language is as a communication

tool used by every human in life . In communicating people can express their

ideas, thoughts , desires , opinions and information which are expressed through

language differently in a community and culture. It is considered that there are

four reasons of communication, namely: entertainment, integration into

community, relationship maintenance, and identity construction (Patrick, 2010: 1).

In communication, people assign various attributes to language forms; they may

feel that a language or variety of a language is ‘elegant’, ‘expressive’, ‘vulgar’,

‘guttural’, or ‘musical’, or that one language form is ‘more polite’ or more

‘aesthetically leasing or displeasing’ than another one (Thomas, 1999:194).

This communication will be effective if people are able to master and

understand language in spoken and written way. In spoken language, speaker

communicates directly to the listeners using pauses, hesitations, tone of voices,

stress, and intonations. Different from spoken language, written language does not

use direct communication but only some written documents with more complex

grammmar to deliver the words to the readers. It can make the readers confuse in

determining the meaning of the written sentences with omitted words called

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Ellipsis occurs when sentence of word, phrase, clause needed to complete

the construction of meaning is omitted from a sentence or clause in order to avoid

repetition. The example of ellipsis can be found in the texts below:

1. Santi suka pelajaran Bahasa Inggris lebih dari Sinta suka pelajaran Bahasa Inggris.

Santi likes English lesson more than Sinta likes English lesson.

Ellipsis :

Santi suka pelajaran Bahasa Inggris lebih dari Sinta. Santi likes English lesson more than Sinta does.

In the sentence above, the phrase pelajaran Bahasa Inggrisis omitted, referring to

sentence Santi suka pelajaran Bahasa Inggris, in order to avoid repetition.

2. Perampok berlari ke halaman sekolah secepat polisi berlari ke halaman sekolah.

The robber runs to school yard as fast as the policeman runs to school yard.

Ellipsis:

Perampok berlari ke halaman sekolah secepat polisi berlari. The robber runs to school yard as fast as the policeman runs.

In sentence 2 , the phrase ke halaman sekolahis omitted, referring to the sentence

Perampok berlari ke halaman sekolah, in order to avoid repetition.

Repeating words can often sound clumsy or inelegant. People try to avoid

repeating the same word in a single sentence and also in a response to a previous

sentence. When writer omit words this way, it must be possible for reader to

reconstruct the full sentence by implication or context. Sometimes reader need to

have read to what was written immediately before the complete sentence. But, in

reading an elliptical sentence, a reader should realize in what context is the text

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3

Ambiguity appears when there are two or more meanings belong to a word

or phrase. It occurs not only in oral but also in written sentences. There are four

types of ambiguity namely: lexical ambiguity, structural ambiguity, phonetic

ambiguity and referential ambiguity. People convey information from a text by a

variety of means. One unclear sentence can be interpreted differenly by different

people. They give positive and negative reaction due to their understanding about

the meaning of the unclear sentence. That’s why, in order to communicate

meaning precisely, it is important to write the sentence in clear meaning to avoid

ambiguity.

Nowadays, some problems of ambiguity tend to appear in social media

network such as twitter and it causes a miscommunication and different

interpretation to the readers about what the writer’s meaning in the text written in

tweets on twitter. Each person must have a reason for every action, as well as

twitter every tweet has the intent and purpose.

Twitter is one of popular social media network beside Facebook that can

be accessed via internet by using modern gadget such as laptop and desktop

computers, though the brevity of tweets makes the application particularly suited

to mobile devices, with users providing a running commentary on their daily

routines. It has more than 300 million worldwide users

(http://wikipedia.org/wiki/twitter). It is very popular in the U.S., Indonesia, Brazil,

Japan, Venezuela, Netherlands. Twitter can be considered as microblogging, users

can post as many as 140 characters of text, called tweets, which are distributed to

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taken as a kind of text which will be analyzed. At the time of observing the texts

used in tweets on twitter, it is found that there are ellipsis and ambiguity.

Recently, the number of twitter users grows rapidly every day. Based on

the researcher own experience in using twitter, it was found that most of twitter

users tend to type the tweets by omitting some words and phrase or it is called as

ellipsis. The tweets are not only about the user’s privacy but also information to

be read by other people. If it is written in ellipsis, it can raise misunderstanding to

the outsider readers or followers because of ambiguous meaning of the word or

phrase .The fact of this phenomenon atrracted the researcher to conduct a research

concern with the analysis on ellipsis and ambiguity found in tweets on twitter.

1.2 The Problems of the Study

Based on the explanation above, these problems of the study are

formulated as the following.

1) What types of ellipsis are found in the tweets on twitter?

2) What types of ambiguity are found in the tweets on twitter?

3) How are the tweets on twitter realized as ellipsis?

1.3 The Objectives of the Study

In relation to the problem of the study, the main objectives of this study

are to:

1) describe the types of ellipsis found in the tweets on twitter,

2) describe the types of ambiguity found in the tweets on twitter, and

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5 1.4 The Scope of the Study

This study focuses on the analysis on ellipsis and ambiguity found in the

tweets on twitter which were written in English. The limitation of the study is

only the investigation of the types of ellipsis and types of ambiguity found in the

tweets on twitter and also the investigation of how the tweets on twitter realized as

ellipsis.

1.5 The Significances of the Study

The significance of the study is generally to give great theoritical and

practical contribution to researchers as well as readers. The findings of this study

are expected to be useful theoritically and practically. Theoritically, the findings

of this study are expected to enrich knowledge of theories on ambiguity and

ellipsis. Therefore, the findings of this study can provide basis for further

researchers of different stages who want to do in depth research in linguistic

development as the follow – up of this study.

Practically, the findings of this study are expected to be useful for twitter

users and followers as information to help overcome the difficulties in interpreting

sentences containing ellipsis and ambiguity. Thus, the findings of this study are

expected to significantly contribute to researcher for future research about ellipsis

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CHAPTER V

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

5.1 Conclusions

The objectives of this study are to describe types of ellipsis and

ambiguity found in the tweets on twitter. In addition, the study attempted to

describe the occurrences of ambiguity in types of ellipsis. In order to gain the

objectives, the data collected for this study were one hundred tweets typed by

twitter users. It can be conluded that:

1. Types of ellipsis found in the tweets on twitter are Nominal, Verbal and

Clausal.

2. Types of ambiguity found in the tweets on twitter are 3 Lexical ambiguity,

9 Structural ambiguity and 15 Referential ambiguity. Not all ellipsis can

cause ambiguity.

3. It is realized that there is 30% elliptical tweets on twitter consist of 12%

Nominal, 10% Verbal and 8% Clausal ellipsis explained by using Halliday

and Hasan’s theory.

5.2 Suggestions

In relation to the conclusion, some suggestions are presented as follows: It

is expected that the findings of the study will be useful and give beneficial for the

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1) The findings of this study can be used for twitter followers to help

overcome the difficulties in interpreting tweets containing ellipsis and

ambiguity.

2) The findings of this study are also suggested to be used for further

researchers as reference to conduct in-depth research about linguistic

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ELLIPSIS AND AMBIGUITY FOUND IN THE TWEETS ON TWITTER.

ELLIPSIS AND AMBIGUITY FOUND IN

THE TWEETS

ON TWITTER

ENGLISH APPLIED LINGUISTICS STUDY PROGRAM

POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL

ELLIPSIS AND AMBIGUITY FOUND IN

THE TWEETS

ON TWITTER

ENGLISH APPLIED LINGUISTICS STUDY PROGRAM

POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL

ABSTRACT

ABSTRAK

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables

REFERENCES