SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS ON SENTENCE PATTERNS IN ...digunakan di penelitian ini adalah analisis isi karena penelitian ini menganalisa pola kalimat di lirik lagu John Denver. Pada akhirnya,

SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS ON SENTENCE PATTERNS

IN JOHN DENVER’S SONG LYRICS

A SARJANA PENDIDIKAN THESIS

Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

to Obtain the Sarjana Pendidikan Degree

in English Language Education

By

Danin Christianto

Student Number: 141214001

ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM

DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGE AND ARTS EDUCATION

FACULTY OF TEACHERS TRAINING AND EDUCATION

SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY

YOGYAKARTA

2018

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

i

SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS ON SENTENCE PATTERNS

IN JOHN DENVER’S SONG LYRICS

A SARJANA PENDIDIKAN THESIS

Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

to Obtain the Sarjana Pendidikan Degree

in English Language Education

By

Danin Christianto

Student Number: 141214001

ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM

DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGE AND ARTS EDUCATION

FACULTY OF TEACHERS TRAINING AND EDUCATION

SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY

YOGYAKARTA

2018


vi

ABSTRACT

Christianto, Danin (2018). Syntactic Analysis on Sentence Patterns in John

Denver’s Song Lyrics. Yogyakarta: English Language Education Study Program,

Sanata Dharma University.

In this world, every living thing has at least one language in order to have

a communication with each other. Humans, for example, are able to show feelings

and emotions and socialize by using languages. In Indonesia, English learners do

not get familiar enough with English sentence patterns. In learning language,

studying sentence patterns in song lyrics becomes more necessary as there are often

misinterpretations of words when they are combined into sentences in song lyrics

in the forms of sentence pattern construction. Considering the issue, the researcher

got interested to analyse syntactically the sentence patterns in John Denver’s song

lyrics.

This research was conducted to answer one research question: What

sentence patterns are used in John Denver’s song lyrics?

In order to answer the research question, the researcher employed

qualitative approach as the nature of this research since it described about certain

phenomena in detail. The method used in this research was content analysis as it

analysed the sentence patterns in the John Denver’s song lyrics. Finally, the

researcher employed the theory of Quirk and Greenbaum (1973) to analyse the

sentence patterns in the lyrics. Additionally, the researcher also employed the

theory of O’Grady, Dobrovolsky, and Katamba (1996) to represent the tree

diagrams and phrase structure rules of the chosen sentences.

Based on the results, the researcher found out that there were 8 out of 9

patterns which were used in the song lyrics. The sentence pattern which was

frequently used was pattern 3: S + Vt + dO. There were 12 sentences which used

the pattern in John Denver’s song lyrics. However, there was no sentence which

used pattern 6: S + Vt + iO + dO. Finally, the researcher hopes that the results can

help English learners to improve their understanding on sentence patterns and

phrase structure rules.

Keywords: John Denver’s song lyrics, sentence pattern, syntactic analysis


vii

ABSTRAK

Christianto, Danin (2018). Syntactic Analysis on Sentence Patterns in John

Denver’s Song Lyrics. Yogyakarta: English Language Education Study Program,

Sanata Dharma University.

Di dunia ini, setiap makhluk hidup setidaknya memiliki satu bahasa dengan

tujuan untuk berkomunikasi dengan sesama. Manusia, sebagai contoh, mampu

menunjukkan perasaan dan emosi dan bersosialisasi dengan menggunakan bahasa.

Di Indonesia, para pembelajar bahasa Inggris belum cukup memahami tentang pola

kalimat bahasa Inggris. Dalam belajar bahasa, mempelajari pola kalimat didalam

lirik lagu menjadi penting karena sering terjadi kesalahan penafsiran kata-kata

ketika mereka disatukan menjadi kalimat di lirik lagu dalam bentuk penyusunan

pola kalimat. Dikarenakan permasalahan tersebut, peneliti menjadi tertarik untuk

menganalisa secara sintaksis pola kalimat yang terdapat di lirik lagu John Denver.

Penelitian ini dilakukan untuk menjawab satu rumusan masalah: Pola

kalimat apa saja yang terdapat di lirik lagu John Denver?

Untuk menjawab rumusan masalah tersebut, peneliti menggunakan

pendekatan kualitatif sebagai lingkup penelitian karena penelitian ini

mendeskripsikan tentang fenomena tertentu secara terperinci. Metode yang

digunakan di penelitian ini adalah analisis isi karena penelitian ini menganalisa pola

kalimat di lirik lagu John Denver. Pada akhirnya, peneliti menggunakan teori dari

Quirk dan Greenbaum (1973) untuk menganalisa pola kalimat di lirik lagu tersebut.

Sebagai tambahan, peneliti juga menggunakan teori dari O’Grady, Dobrovolsky,

dan Katamba (1996) untuk menggambarkan diagram pohon dan aturan struktur

frasa dari kalimat-kalimat yang telah dipilih.

Berdasarkan dari hasil penelitian tersebut, peneliti menemukan bahwa

terdapat 8 dari 9 pola kalimat yang digunakan di lirik lagu tersebut. Pola kalimat

yang sering digunakan adalah pattern 3: S + Vt + dO. Terdapat 12 kalimat yang

menggunakan pola ini di lirik lagu John Denver. Akan tetapi, tidak ada kalimat

yang menggunakan pattern 6: S + Vt + iO + dO. Akhirnya, peneliti berharap bahwa

hasil dari penelitian ini dapat membantu para pembelajar bahasa Inggris untuk

meningkatkan pemahaman mereka tentang pola kalimat dan aturan struktur frasa

dalam bahasa Inggris.

Kata Kunci: : John Denver’s song lyrics, sentence pattern, syntactic analysis


viii

DEDICATION PAGE

“Sometimes, the bad things that happen in our lives put us directly on the path to the best things that will ever happen to us” (Nicole Reed)

This thesis is dedicated to my beloved family:

Papi Ir. Stephanus Wijanto;

Mami Maria Asumpta Suryani Budiadi;

Kokoh F. B. Edwin Cipta Adhi, S.T.P.;

Adik Felix Kurniawan; and

myself


ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This wonderful journey would not be possible without the guidance and

support. First and foremost, I would like to dedicate my best gratitude to Almighty

Lord Jesus Christ for His greatest blessing during my academic life. Because of

His blessing and guidance, I was able to be always strong in facing many difficult

obstacles during the process of finishing my undergraduate thesis.

My big gratitude goes to Bapak Drs. Barli Bram, M.Ed., Ph.D., my thesis

advisor, for his precious suggestions and critics which make me able to accomplish

this study. He has given much of his attention, support, time, and patience for the

sake of this thesis writing’s success.

My everlasting thanks are given to my beloved family members, Papi Ir.

Stephanus Wijanto, Mami M. A. Suryani Budiadi, Kokoh F. B. Edwin Cipta

Adhi, S.T.P., dan Adik Felix Kurniawan, for their endless love, generosity,

support and affection which are given during my study. Without them, I would not

be able to motivate myself in facing this academic life.

I would also like to give my gratitude to my best friends from the Ex-

Student Hall Squads: Veronika Oktaviani, Marie-Louise Catherine

Widyananda, Johan Tobias Kristiano, Antonia Eka Puspita, Vinsensius Galuh

Kusuma, Jessica, Benita Saraswati, Angelina Lintang Venta Dewanti,

Vincentius Yosa Rahardiyan, Aven Kristianus, and Yohanes Mahatmo Suryo

Widiasmoro for their cares, wonderful time, and support given to me in finishing


x

my thesis. I will never forget our beautiful moments of togetherness. I consider

them a part of my good family. I am so grateful to be able to befriend with people

like them.

My special gratitude is also addressed to my only and beloved girlfriend

Ivena Karin for her unconditional and endless love and motivation given to me in

accomplishing my academic study. I thank her for being extra-care to me,

particularly when I had so many hard times and problems. Also, I thank her family

members for their kindness and concern so that I always feel well-motivated.

Last but not least, I would also like to thank everybody, especially my

friends from batch 2014, who has come to my life and helped me to develop and

grow to be a better individual. May God bless us all.

Danin Christianto


xi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

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

APPROVAL PAGES .............................................................................................. ii

STATEMENT OF WORK’S ORIGINALITY ...................................................... iv

PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI ......................................................... v

ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................... vi

ABSTRAK .............................................................................................................. vii

DEDICATION PAGE .......................................................................................... viii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................... ix

TABLE OF CONTENTS ....................................................................................... xi

LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................... xiii

LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................. xiv

LIST OF APPENDICES ........................................................................................ xv

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION

A. Research Background .................................................................... 1

B. Research Questions ........................................................................ 4

C. Research Significance .................................................................... 4

D. Definition of Terms ........................................................................ 5

CHAPTER II. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

A. Theoretical Description .................................................................. 7

1. Syntax ......................................................................................... 7

2. Types of Sentences ..................................................................... 8

3. Sentence Pattern ....................................................................... 13

4. Tree Diagram ........................................................................... 17

5. Song Lyric ................................................................................ 19

6. Relevant Previous Studies ........................................................ 20

B. Theoretical Framework ................................................................ 24


xii

CHAPTER III. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

A. Research Method ......................................................................... 25

B. Data Source .................................................................................. 26

C. Data Gathering Technique ........................................................... 27

D. Data Analysis Technique ............................................................. 28

1. Data Reduction ......................................................................... 28

2. Data Display ............................................................................. 29

3. Conclusion Drawing ................................................................ 30

CHAPTER IV. RESEARCH RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

A. Sentence Patterns in John Denver’s Song Lyrics ........................ 31

B. Summary Points ........................................................................... 67

CHAPTER V. CONCLUSIONS, IMPLICATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS

A. Conclusions .................................................................................. 69

B. Implications .................................................................................. 70

C. Recommendations ........................................................................ 70

REFERENCES ....................................................................................................... 72

APPENDICES ....................................................................................................... 76


xiii

LIST OF TABLES

Page

3.1 The Examples of the Sentence Type and Pattern in John Denver’s Song Lyrics ....... 30

4.1 The Numbers of the Sentence Patterns in John Denver’s Song Lyrics ....................... 31


xiv

LIST OF FIGURES

Page

2.1 Some Examples of the Tree Diagrams of Noun Phrases ................................. 12

2.2 Some Examples of the Tree Diagrams of Verb Phrases .................................. 13

2.3 The Traditional View of the Structure of S ...................................................... 17

2.4 The Popular Contemporary View of the Structure of S ................................... 18

2.5 An IP with an Auxiliary in the Infl Position ................................................... 19

3.1 The Tree Diagram Example of a Sentence in John Denver’s Song Lyrics ...... 29


xv

LIST OF APPENDICES

Page

Appendix 1. Wild Montana Skies lyrics ................................................................ 77

Appendix 2. Darcy Farrow lyrics ........................................................................... 79

Appendix 3. Poems, Prayers, and Promises lyrics ................................................. 80

Appendix 4. Take Me Home Country Road lyrics ................................................ 82

Appendix 5. Shanghai Breezes lyrics .................................................................... 83

Appendix 6. Fly Away lyrics ................................................................................. 85


1

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

In this chapter, the researcher discusses the research background, research

question, research significance, and definition of terms which are employed in this

study.

A. Research Background

In this world, every living thing has at least one language in order to have a

communication with each other. Humans, for example, are able to show feelings

and emotions and socialize by using languages. Sapir (1921) defines the language

as “a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions,

and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols” (p. 8). There

are some systems which create language. O’Grady (2005) states “if a language is

spoken, it must have a phonetic and phonological systems; since it has words and

sentences, it must also have a morphology and syntax systems” (p. 5). Therefore,

in order to use language, people need to produce sentences.

Sentence can be considered as one of the most complex parts in language.

According to Hornby (2015), sentence can be defined as “a set of words expressing

a statement, a question or an order, usually containing a subject and a verb” (p.

1365). It means that in order to create a sentence, there must be at least one subject

and one verb. She cries, for example, is called a sentence because the word She is


2

the subject and the word cries is the verb. Such a sentence is included into one of

the basic sentence patterns.

The linguistic branch which studies how sentences are formed is called

syntax. As stated in O’Grady, Dobrovolsky, and Katamba (1996) that syntax is the

system of rules and categories that underlies sentence formation in human language

(p. 732). Further, Radford (1997) adds that syntax focuses on how words are put

together to form phrases and sentences (p. 1). It means that syntactic patterns,

syntactic constructions, and system of rules and categories which underlie the

theory of sentence formation are discussed in syntax. Thus, it can be simply said

that one of the linguistics branches which studies about the grammatical concepts

and patterns of sentences is called syntax.

Language is also considered as an arbitrary system. Lyons (1984) similarly

says that language is “a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a

social group cooperates (p. 3). This means that people are able to develop their

knowledge and to know something by using language. As an example, people use

language to speak, write, and analyse song lyrics.

Music is a form of art which can be used to bring pleasure to listeners and

it can also motivate and accompany us through difficult times, and alleviate our

worries. Nowadays, many kinds of music such as pop, rock, heavy metal, R&B

become very popular. Country music, last but not least, is also one of the famous

music in the world. There are a lot of well-known country music singers such as

John Denver, Brad Praisley, Hank Williams, and Patsy Cline.


3

Studying sentence patterns in song lyrics becomes more necessary as there

are often misinterpretations of words or lexical items when they are combined into

sentences in song lyrics in the forms of sentence patterns construction.

In Indonesia, especially, English learners do not get familiar enough to

English sentence patterns. They master the language in a point-to-point way. It

means that they know about the English word-classes or parts of speech, such as

nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and articles or

determiners. However, after the words are put together in the correct order, the

learners cannot interpret the meaning of the sentences correctly. In short, they fail

to comprehend what they are supposed to be familiar with.

This research focuses on sentence patterns in six lyrics of John Denver’s

songs. They are Wild Montana Skies, Back Home Again, Poems, Prayers, and

Promises, Take Me Home Country Roads, Shanghai Breezes, and Fly Away. The

researcher chooses John Denver’s song lyrics because they contain a few patterns

which can be analysed syntactically. On the other hand, the songs are chosen

because of the wonderful stories and messages behind which can make this research

more meaningful to readers.

Through this research, the researcher hopes that readers can understand and

get deeper information about syntactic analysis on sentence patterns. To English

learners, hopefully that this research can help more in identifying the sentence

patterns and the phrase categories which are in the phrase structure rules. Last but

not least, to Sanata Dharma University’s English Language Education Study


4

Program (ELESP) students, the researcher hopes that this research can improve

their comprehension in analysing sentences, especially for those who take Grammar

and Morpho-Syntax courses.

B. Research Question

From the description above, the researcher formulates a research question

to be discussed, namely “what sentence patterns are used in John Denver’s song

lyrics?”.

C. Research Significance

The researcher hopes that this research can give significance for ELESP

students and future researchers who are interested in studying this topic.

1. ELESP Students

This research is expected to assist students of English Language Education

Study Program (ELESP) in learning English sentence patterns by analysing song

lyrics in Grammar classes. In addition, it is also expected that this research can be

useful for students to practice drawing tree diagrams and identify phrase structure

rules (in the Syntax course at the university, for example).

2. Future Researchers

The researcher expects that this research can be used as a useful reference

for future researchers who are interested in researching syntactic analysis.


5

Furthermore, the researcher also hopes that future researchers can conduct the same

research with different subjects quantitatively.

D. Definition of Terms

In order to enable readers to follow the thesis more easily, the researcher

defines some significant terms to avoid any confusion and misconception. In this

section, there are four terms which are presented: Syntactic Analysis, Sentence

Pattern, Tree Diagram, and Song Lyrics.

1. Syntactic Analysis

Syntactic Analysis is an analysis of the structure of a sentence to break down

its component parts of speech with an explanation of the form, function, and

syntactic relationship of each part. The above definition is similar to Bergmann,

Hall, and Ross’ (2007, p. 671), who have defined syntactic analysis as the analysis

(by human or computer) of the syntactic structure of a sentence that is heard or read:

reconstructing a hierarchial structure from a flat sequence of words. By doing the

syntactic analysis, readers will be able to understand how words can be changed

into phrases, clauses, and sentences. In this study, the researcher focuses on

analysing the sentence patterns of John Denver’s song lyrics syntactically.

2. Sentence Pattern

Sentence pattern can be defined as the way to build sentences. It discusses

how sentences are formed gramatically. Syntactically, sentence pattern represents


6

the structure categories of each lexical item which can be analysed. In this research,

the sentence patterns in John Denver’s song lyrics will be analysed.

3. Tree Diagram

Tree diagram is a structure which is used to analyse the internal structure of

words and phrases. This definition is similar to O’Grady, Dobrovolsky, and

Katamba’s (1996, p. 734) who state that the diagram “represents the details of a

word’s or phrase’s internal structure”. Radford (1997) also adds tree diagram is “a

way of representing the syntactic structure of a phrase or sentence” (p. 533). From

the explanation, it can be seen that tree diagram can be considered as a suitable

means of showing the internal structure of sentences as produced by a set of rules.

In short, using the theory of tree diagram in this research will make the structure of

sentences easier to be understood by readers.

4. Song Lyrics

Song can be defined as a piece of music which can be used for singing.

Based on Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2015), song is “a short piece of

music with words that you sing” (p. 1440). On the other hand, lyric is defined as

words which form a song. Hornby (2015) states that lyric is “an artistic licence

which expresses direct personal feeling” (p. 906). In this research, the researcher

uses six John Denver’s song lyrics as the contexts of the research.


7

CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

In this chapter, the researcher discusses some theories related to this thesis.

There are two major sections, namely theoretical description and theoretical

framework. In theoretical description, the researcher explains several theories

which are used as the bases in this thesis. In the theoretical framework, the

researcher discusses more how the theories help to find out the answer of the

research problem.

A. Theoretical Description

This section provides some theories which are used to support this research,

namely Syntax, Types of Sentences, Sentence Pattern, Tree Diagram, Song Lyric,

and Relevant Previous Studies.

1. Syntax

In linguistics, syntax is one of the branches which focuses on sentence

structures. It studies about the system of rules and categories which underlies

sentence formation in human language (O’Grady, Dobrovolsky, & Katamba, 1996,

p. 732). In addition, Radford (1997) adds that syntax is the study of how words are

combined together to form phrases and sentences (p. 531).

Etymologically, the term “syntax” means “to arrange together” (derived

from the words “syn”: together, and “taxis”: an arrangement) and the name given


8

to the part of grammar which treats how words are arranged together in a sentence

and how they function (Onions, 1971, p. 23). Matthews (1981), then, follows the

definition by saying that the term “syntax” was from ancient Greek “syntaxis”, a

verbal noun which meant “arrangement” or “setting out together” words into

phrases, or clauses into sentences.

2. Types of Sentences

Sentence is one of the most important things in language. Sentence can be

defined as a string of words which produces an expression. Radford (1997) defines

the sentence as “a free-standing clause which is not contained within some larger

expression” (p. 527). In short, sentence is simply defined as a group of words which

make a complete thought.

Sentence is divided into four major types; simple sentence, compound

sentence, complex sentence, and compound-complex sentence. Below are the

explanation of each type of the sentence.

a. Simple Sentence

The first sentence type is called simple sentence. As its name suggests,

simple sentence is “simple” and it can stand by itself, which means that this type of

sentence does not need any other clauses to make it independent. Murcia and

Freeman (1999) states “A simple sentence, then, contains at least one subject and

one verb and can stand alone as an independent clause” (p. 20). Thus, simple

sentence is already meaningful without the help of any dependent clause.


9

Simple sentence has the most basic elements. It must contain at least subject

and verb to make it stand by itself. Below are some examples of the simple

sentences.

1) The building collapsed

2) They bought a new car

3) The director appointed the man a president

4) We all consider her unworthy

b. Compound Sentence

The second sentence type is called compound sentence. This sentence

requires at least two main or independent clauses. In contrast to a simple sentence,

a compound sentence consists of two or more clauses of equal grammatical

importance (Murcia & Freeman, 1999, p. 20). The main clauses of a compound

sentence are connected with connectors (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, and so). The

examples of compound sentences are as below.

1) We can go to the library or we can go to the park

2) He is a writer and she is a cook

3) Sandra goes to the park, but she is not finished with her homework yet

c. Complex Sentence

The third sentence type is called complex sentence. This sentence contains

one independent clause and at least one dependent clause. The examples are as

below.


10

1) I know the man who is under the tree

2) James is watching TV when I come back

3) He said that it was better to have a dinner in a restaurant

d. Compound-Complex Sentence

Compound-complex sentence is the fourth type of a sentence. This sentence

has at least two or more independent clauses and at least one or more dependent

clauses. The sentence can be in the forms of statement, question, request, and

exclamation. The examples are as below.

1) My brother and I went to the cinema that I had been wanting to see, and then

we went to a restaurant near the cinema;

2) Before they were friends, Lisa and Trevor knew Julia, but they did not

realise that they knew her until they met;

3) Stephanie cried when her dog died, but she soon got better.

Therefore, it can be concluded that sentence is the basis of syntactic system

which consists of a group words containing a subject and predicate as means of

expressing ideas and messages.

According to Bornstein (1977, p. 52), a sentence must contain Noun Phrase

and Verb Phrase (S NP + VP).

a. Noun Phrase

Noun phrase is a group of words in which a noun or pronoun has a function

as the head of the phrase. Matthews (1997) defines noun phrase as “a phrase whose


11

head functions as noun”. According to Close (1975, p. 2), noun phrase can be in the

forms of the following.

1) a NOUN, such as John, girls

2) a NOMINAL GROUP, such as the girls, the boy’s book, in which a noun

(girls, book) is the HEAD, and in which the other words (the, the boy’s)

MODIFY the head

3) a PRONOUN, which can be one of the seven so-called PERSONAL

PRONOUNS (I, you, we, they, he, she, it) or an INDEFINITE PRONOUN

like everyone or something, or one of the words like this and that which can

be used as pronouns

4) a PRONOMINAL GROUP, such as we all, everyone in our class, in which

a pronoun (we, everyone) is the head.

In syntactic analysis, the noun phrases are represented by using the phrase structure

rule as below.

NP N (book, John, family, New York, you, I, he, they)

NP Det + N (a book, that dog, this city, the sentence)

NP NP + S (The man who rides a motorcycle)

NP The man

S The man rides a motorcycle


12

From the phrase structure rules of the noun phrases above, the tree diagrams of the

rules are as below.

Figure 2.1 Some Examples of the Tree Diagrams of Noun Phrases

b. Verb Phrase

Verb phrase is a group of words which has a verb as the head. The definition

is similar to Dwijatmoko (2002), who states that “a verb phrase contains a verb as

the head” (p. 37). Radford (1997) defines the verb phrase as “a phrase or maximal

projection which is headed by a verb” (p. 534). In syntax, the tree diagrams of verb

phrases are represented below.


13

Figure 2.2 Some Examples of the Tree Diagrams of Verb Phrases

3. Sentence Pattern

Sentence pattern is defined as a tool to build a sentence. It is the different

varieties of sentences (e.g. simple and complex sentence) which are useful in

producing correct sentence patterns in writing. In English, there are several types

and different numbers of sentence patterns which are proposed by different experts.

Some experts only gave patterns while the others proposed seven. Quirk and

Greenbaum (1973) gave seven English sentence patterns as below.

1) Pattern 1: S + Lv + A

Example:

a) Jane is in the classroom.

b) The book was on the table.


14

c) They are in the hotel.

2) Pattern 2: S + Lv + SC

Example:

a) Karin is beautiful.

b) He looks sad.

c) Mr. Barli has been a lecturer.

3) Pattern 3: S + Vt + dO

Example:

a) He catches the ball.

b) She loves Richard.

c) They learn to read a book

4) Pattern 4: S + Vt + dO + A

Example:

a) Karin puts her cellphone on the bed.

b) I am planning a tour to Massachussets.

c) He looked like as if he had seen a ghost

d) Everyone must attend the meeting regularly.

e) The earthquake happened when we slept

5) Pattern 5: S + Vt + dO + OC

Example:

a) The committee elected him a president.

b) They named the child Karin.

c) The painters painted the wall white.


15

6) Pattern 6: S + Vt + iO + dO

Example:

a) Felix sent me a message.

b) The lecturer taught us syntax.

c) My father has given me a present.

7) Pattern 7: S + Vi

a) She is crying.

b) The boys were laughing.

c) The bird flies.

(Quirk & Greenbaum, 1973, p. 167)

The above sentence patterns are commonly used when somebody tries to produce

grammatically correct sentences. The sentences, however, can contain more than

one adverbials. They can be put whether in the beginning, before or after a verb of

a sentence. Quirk and Greenbaum (1973) call it as “Optional Adverbials”, which

means that the sentence patterns “can be expanded by the addition of various

optional adverbials” (p. 168). But, even though the sentences are added optional

adverbials, the patterns remain the same as the basic forms. There are three basic

sentence patterns which can be expanded by additional adverbials (Quirk &

Greenbaum, 1973, p. 168). Followings are the description of each pattern and its

example.

1) Pattern 1: (A) + S + Lv + (A) + A

Example: (In the campus), the students are (now) on vacation

2) Pattern 6: S + (A) + Vt + iO +dO


16

Example: He (kindly) gave us his regards

3) Pattern 7: (A) + S + Vi + (A)

Example: (Sometimes), she cries (loudly); (Suddenly), my brother laughed

(uncontrollably)

(Quirk & Greenbaum, 1973, p. 168)

The optional adverbials oftenly appear when people use oral and written English.

The researcher concluded that in pattern 1, the optional adverbial (s) can occur in

the beginning and/or at the end of a sentence. In pattern 2, the first optional

adverbial can occur in the beginning of a sentence and the second one can appear

before another adverb. In pattern 6, at last, the adverbial can occur before the main

verb.

Quirk and Greenbaum (1973, p. 168) also categorise each symbol of the

sentence pattern. There are nine symbols which are found to write down the

patterns. The followings are the categorised symbols.

S = Subject SC = Subject Complement

Vt = Transitive Verb OC = Object Complement

Vi = Intransitive Verb iO = Indirect Object

A = Adverb dO = Direct Object

Lv = Linking Verb

(Quirk and Greenbaum, 1973, p. 168)


17

4. Tree Diagram

Tree diagram is a diagram which resembles layers of constituents. Veit

(1986, p. 14) states that tree diagrams had become the most widely used as a way

of displaying a sentence’s makeup. According to Crystal (2008), tree diagram is

defined as “a two-dimensional diagram used in GENERATIVE GRAMMAR as a

convenient means of displaying the internal HIERARCHICAL STRUCTURE of

SENTENCES as generated by a set of rules“ (p. 494). Thus, by using the tree

diagram, the structures or patterns of sentences can be displayed.

There are two different views in drawing the tree diagrams. One is the

diagram which is constructed from the traditional view and the other one is

constructed from the popular contemporary view. O’Grady, Dobrovolsky, and

Katamba (1996, p. 191) give the examples as below.

(O’Grady, Dobrovolsky, and Katamba, 1996)

Figure 2.3 The Traditional View of the Structure of S

The diagram above shows that S (Sentence) is different from any other phrases.

O’Grady, Dobrovolsky, and Katamba (1996, p. 191) notes that S is special as there


18

is no internal structure (with a head, a complement, and a specifier). According to

them, however, nowadays linguists believe that S is the same to other phrases and

it has the structure as below.

(O’Grady, Dobrovolsky, and Katamba, 1996)

Figure 2.4 The Popular Contemporary View of the Structure of S

From the diagram above, it can be seen that IP (Inflectional Phrase) acts as the head

of the phrase. O’Grady, Dobrovolsky, and Katamba (1996) say “sentences have an

abstract category which is dubbed ‘Infl’, short for ‘inflection, as their head and it

serves as the sentence’s tense” (p. 191). The Infl is a must so that it clearly indicates

that sentences in English have tense, whether they are past or non-past.

In drawing a tree diagram of a sentence, there is a possibility that an

auxiliary verb will appear in the head position and it is marked as the Infl category.

The free forms like will and can, for examples, are considered Infl when they are in

the tree diagram. As stated in O’Grady, Dobrovolsky, and Katamba (1996),

“auxiliary verbs can appear in the head position of sentences and are thus treated as


19

an instance of the Infl category” (p. 192). Figure 2.5 is the example of an auxiliary

verb which is treated as the Infl category in a sentence.

Figure 2.5 An IP with an Auxiliary in the Infl Position

5. Song Lyric

Song lyric can only be defined separately. The word “song” means a piece

of music which can be used for singing. According to Hornby (2015), song is “a

short piece of music with words that you sing” (p. 1440). Song is able to interpret

poems and translate their mood and atmosphere into music (Kamien, 1988, p. 307).

It also creates satisfying melodies which are well-molded to the text. Thus, the

researcher concludes that song is defined as artistic licence which can be used for

singing. Furthermore, it is used to express someone’s emotion.

Lyric is defined as the song’s words. Hornby (2015) states that lyric is “a

kind of poetry which expresses direct personal feeling” (p. 906). Usually, lyric is

produced in form of a written text by a lyre so that it can be read. From the

explanation, it can be concluded that lyric is the words of a song which describe

someone’s emotion or feeling.


20

6. Relevant Previous Studies

Syntactic analysis is a linguistic analysis of the structure of a sentence to

break down its parts of speech components with an explanation of the form,

function, and syntactic relationship of each part. The analysis is also able to show

the patterns of the sentence. In this part, the researcher will show some examples of

previous studies which are related to this research.

The first study on syntactic analysis has been done previously by Purwata

(2008). The study meant to analyse the sentence patterns of the lyrics syntactically.

To analyse them, the researcher employed some theories which were suitable with

the subject. Also, the theory of tree diagram from Bornstein (1997) was used to

analyse the lyrics. The type of the research was descriptive qualitative research. To

gather the data, the researcher chose three songs which were taken from one of the

Westilfe’s albums, namely Westlife Deluxe. As a result, the researcher found

seventeen kinds of sentence patterns. The sentences which were mostly used in the

lyrics were kernel sentences and transformational sentences. Then, the sentence

patterns which were used in the lyrics consisted of Noun Phrase plus Verb Phrase,

Conjunction plus Noun Phrases plus Verb Phrases, and Adverb of Place plus Noun

Phrase plus Verb Phrase. At last, the researcher also found the substandard English

words such as I’ve, cause, and gonna.

The second study was conducted by Khusnah (2008). The study was aimed

to describe the kinds and the dominant structure of modification used in some of

Emily Dickinson’s poems. Here, the researcher used descriptive qualitative method


21

to conduct the research and he used Chinese boxes theory from Francis (1958) to

analyse the collected data. The first result of the study, which was based on

Francis’s theory (1958), showed that the kinds of modification were noun phrase,

verb phrase, adverb phrase, and adjective phrase. However, there was no structure

of modification in form of prepositional phrase and function word. The second

result revealed that the dominant phrase used was noun phrase.

The third study was conducted by Halimah (2016). The purpose of the study

was aimed to describe the syntactic structures of surface and deep structures that

were found in Hello Magazine’s gossip article sentences by using the theory of tree

diagram. Also, it was aimed to describe syntactic structures of Hello Magazine’s

gossip article sentences by using the theory of Chinese boxes. The descriptive

qualitative research was used in this study by the researcher. The first findings of

the study showed that the syntactic patterns of surface structure and deep structure

in the gossip article in Hello magazine consisted of noun phrase and verb phrase

which covered many kinds of sentences. The second findings showed that the

structure of predication had dominated all of the sentences in Hello Magazine’s

gossip article. First, the structure of predication consisted of subject noun and it had

a predicate structure of complementation. Second, the structure of modification

tended to modificate the head noun with the noun or proper noun as the modifier.

Third, the structure of complementation was dominated by a transitive verb as the

verbal element and a direct object as the complement. Fourth, the structure of

coordination were the structure of predication and the structure of complementation

connected with the coordinator such as and, with, and not.


22

The fourth study was conducted by Kurohashi and Nagao (1994). The

purpose of the study was to present a syntactic analysis method which detected

conjunctive structures in a sentence by checking parallelism of two series of words

and to analyse the dependency structure of the sentences with the help of the

information about the conjunctive structures. The data of the study were 150

Japanese sentences and they were analysed by using experimental method. The

results, thus, were varieties of conjunctive structures in Japanese sentences could

be detected by using a certain similarity measure and information about conjunctive

structures enabled the syntactic analysis to be more robust and successful in

managing long and complex sentences.

The fifth study was conducted by Ariesta (2014). The study was aimed to

identify the formula or the pattern of the relative clause, analyse the structure of

relative clause, and classify the types of relative clauses found in the Steinbeck’s

The Pearl novel. The type of the research was qualitative research since the the data

were analysed by using content analysis technique. The theory which the researcher

used was from Generative Transformation by Chomsky (1971) in his book entitled

Syntactic Structure. Then, the first results, which was the formula or the pattern of

the relative clause, were Relative Pronoun or adverb plus subject plus verb, Relative

Pronoun as a subject plus verb, and Clause plus Relative Pronoun plus Clause. The

second results were that the researcher found three types of relative clauses in the

novel such as Restrictive, Non-restrictive, and Free.

From the five relevant previous studies above, it can be seen that all of them

have the similar aspects of this research, specificaly the syntactic analysis.


23

However, the object which will be analysed in this research is different. In the study

which was conducted by Purwata (2008), particularly, Westlife’s songs lyrics were

taken as the data source while John Denver’s songs lyrics are taken as the data

source in this research. Therefore, the findings of this research will also be different

from the previous studies which have been conducted by Khusnah (2008), Halimah

(2016), Kurohashi and Nagao (1994), and Ariesta (2014). Since the researcher tried

to develop the research which have been done by the previous researchers, the

research objective of this study is to analyse sentence patterns from other song

lyrics. Therefore, it can be concluded that the researchers from the previous studies

give significant help in finding the references of the theories. The researcher expects

that this research can be beneficial to readers and future linguistic researchers who

are interested in studying and researching about syntactic analysis.

B. Theoretical Framework

This research analyses syntactically the sentence patterns which are found

in John Denver’s song lyrics. From the theoretical description, the researcher used

the theory of sentence patterns from Quirk and Greenbaum (1973) and the theory

of phrase structure from O’Grady, Dobrovolsky, and Katamba (1996) to analyse

the data.

To answer the research question, namely “What sentence patterns are used

in John Denver’s song lyrics?”, the researcher referred to the theory of sentence

patterns which was proposed by Quirk and Greenbaum (1973) to find out the types

of sentence patterns in the song lyrics and the theory of phrase structure rules from


24

O’Grady, Dobrovolsky, and Katamba (1996) to draw the tree diagram and represent

the patterns.

Thus, this chapter provides the theories which are related and needed in this

research. The main theory of this research is from Quirk and Greenbaum (1973)

about sentence patterns. The second theory is from O’Grady, Dobrovolsky, and

Katamba (1996) about the popular contemporary view of the phrase structure. The

theories were employed to analyse the patterns of several sentences in the lyrics.

Therefore, in order to find out the answer to the research question, the researcher

analysed the sentences in John Denver’s song lyrics.


25

CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

In this chapter, the researcher presents the methodology which is used to

conduct the study. This chapter discusses the methodology systematically. The

discussion includes research method, data source, instruments and data gathering

technique, and data analysis techniques.

A. Research Method

This research focused on the syntactic analysis on sentence patterns used in

John Denver’s song lyrics. There is only one research question formulated to be

discussed in this study. The question is “What sentence patterns are used in John

Denver’s song lyrics?” The research was done by analysing the chosen sentences

of John Denver’s song lyrics using the representation of tree diagram.

Since this research focused on the sentence patterns of song lyrics, the

researcher used qualitative research to analyse the data. Ary, Jacobs, and Razavieh

(2002) stated “Qualitative research is a generic term for a variety of research

approaches that study phenomena in their natural settings, without predetermined

hypotheses” (p. 25). It means that the data are collected and analysed in forms of

descriptive rather than statistical or numerical data. Therefore, the qualitative

researchers deal more with descriptions rather than the quantity of data.


26

In this research, the researcher analysed the sentence patterns in John

Denver’s song lyrics. It means that this research belongs to content analysis.

Content analysis is a technique which enables researchers to study human behavior

by analysing their communication in an indirect way (Fraenkel, Wallen, & Hyun,

2011, p. 478). The communication can be in the form of songs, textbooks, essays,

editorials, graffiti, newspapers, articles, pictures, films, advertisements, electronic

media, or scripts (Fraenkel et al, 2011, p. 478). This means that the document which

can be used as the subject to be analysed is in form of audio, recording, written, or

visual documents. According to Gall, Gall, and Borg (2007), content analysis

focuses on studying “particular aspects of the information contained in a document,

lyrics, film, or other form of communication”. Therefore, the researcher used the

John Denver’s song lyrics to be analysed in order to answer the research question

of this study.

B. Data Source

This research was done by analysing song lyrics which were written by John

Denver. The analysis of the song lyrics was started on 15th November 2017 up to

28th March 2018. For three months, the researcher had analysed, identified, and

categorised the sentence patterns of the lyrics and written up the report on the

research. Therefore, the research setting was varied, such as library, home, and cafe

as long as the scripts of the song lyrics were available since the study does not deal

with human interaction and field study.


27

The subjects of this research were John Denver’s song lyrics. John Denver

was Henry John Deutschendorf Jr., or known professionally as John Denver, was

an American singer, songwriter, record producer, actor, activist, and humanitarian.

He was born on 31st December 1943 in Roswell, New Mexico, United States. After

dropping out of college, he traveled to New York City and began his music career.

Peter, Paul and Mary recorded his "Leaving on a Jet Plane" in 1967 and his, "Rocky

Mountain High," became an official song of the state of Colorado. Denver was an

activist for environmental causes and founded the World Hunger Project.

Unfortunately, Denver passed away when he and his pilot flight his new aircraft

over the ocean on 12th October 1997. Denver's pilot's license, due to his drunk-

driving arrests, was missing the medical endorsement required to make it legal, and

toxicology tests were run on his remains, but they came back negative. Denver was

thought to have lost control of the plane while fumbling with a lever that shifted the

engine's fuel supply from one tank to the other.

The researcher used six John Denver’s song lyrics in which their sentences

were taken to be analysed. The songs were Wild Montana Skies; Darcy Farrow;

Poems, Prayers, and Promises; Take Me Home Country Roads; Shanghai Breezes;

and Fly Away. They were chosen because there are many sentences which can be

analysed syntactically their phrase structures and patterns.

C. Data Gathering Techniques

In this research, the first instrument was human, that is, the researcher

himself. The researcher organised what he did with the data such as find the data


28

related to the limitation of the study (sentences which are in the John Denver’s song

lyrics). The researcher gathered the data by using a website, namely azlyrics.com.

There were 59 corpus data collected by analysing the sentences in the song lyrics.

From the corpus data, the researcher selected five sentences from each song lyric to

be analysed. Also, the researcher used information several books, journals, and

internet in order to support the data.

The second istruments were the lyrics of John Denver’s songs. There were

five songs used to be analysed in this research. The songs were entitled Wild

Montana Skies; Darcy Farrow; Poems, Prayers, and Promises; Take Me Home

Country Roads; Shanghai Breezes; and Fly Away. The selected lines of the songs

were used to answer the research question which was “What sentence patterns are

used in John Denver’s song lyrics?”

To collect the data, the writer firstly observed the John Denver’s song lyrics.

The researcher searched the lyrics of the songs on the internet. Observation is the

basic technique to collect data in qualitative research. The data gathered were in

form of words instead of numeric data.

D. Data Analysis Techniques

According to Miles and Huberman (1994), there are three steps of analysing

qualitative data, namely data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing.

Below is the explanation of each step.


29

1. Data Reduction

Data reduction is a process of choosing certain data. Miles and Huberman

(1994) say that data reduction is the process of selecting, simplifying, abstracting,

and transforming data in the transcriptions. The researcher analysed all sentences

in the six John Denver’s song lyrics whose patterns were able to be analysed. Then,

the researcher chose five sentences from each lyric, particularly sentences which

contained new sentence patterns and categories.

2. Data Display

Displaying data will ease the researcher in constructing the conclusion. As

stated by Miles and Huberman (1994) that a display is an assembly of information

which is compressed and organised in order to make the conclusion to be

constructed. By using this process, the researcher drew the tree diagram and then

put the formulas of the diagram and patterns of the sentences based on the diagram

into a table. It was made so that the researcher would be easier to draw the

conclusion according to the data. Miles and Huberman (1994) say that by looking

at displays will help the researcher to comprehend the idea of the information so

that the researcher is able to determine what to do next. In short, by displaying data,

the researcher would be able to draw conclusion more easily.


30

Figure 3.1 The Tree Diagram Example of a Sentence in John Denver’s Song

Lyrics

Table 3.1 The Examples of the Sentence Type and Pattern in John

Denver’s Song Lyrics

Sentence Type Simple Sentence

Sentence Pattern (s) Pattern 4: S + Vt + dO + A

3. Conclusion Drawing

The last step in interpreting the data is drawing the conclusions. The

researcher drew the conclusions based on the data which had been simplified after

finishing the previous steps. In short, the conclusions became more accurate and

clearer since they were built from the processed data before.


31

CHAPTER IV

RESEARCH RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter discusses the results and discussion in order to answer the

research question which is formulated in the first chapter.

A. Sentence Patterns in John Denver’s Song Lyrics

In this section, the researcher describes the result of the patterns of sentences

of the six John Denver’s song lyrics, namely Wild Montana Skies; Darcy Farrow;

Poems, Prayers, and Promises; Take Me Home Country Roads; Shanghai Breezes;

and Fly Away. From the sentences, the researcher identified sentence patterns in

John Denver’s song lyrics are as below.

Table 4.1 The Numbers of the Sentence Patterns in John Denver’ Song

Lyrics

Songs’

Titles

Sentence Patterns

Pattern

1

Pattern

2

Pattern

3

Pattern

4

Pattern

5

Pattern

6

Pattern

7

Pattern

8

Pattern

9

Wild

Montana

Skies

1 - 4 1 1 - 1 1 -

Darcy

Farrow - 1 1 3 - - - - -

Poems,

Prayers,

and

Promises

1 1 3 - - - - - -

Take me

Home,

Country

Roads

- 1 1 2 1 - - - -

Shanghai

Breezes - 2 1 - 1 - - - 1

Fly Away - 1 2 - 1 - 1 - -

Total 2 6 12 6 4 - 2 1 1


32

Table 4.1 shows the results of the used sentence patterns. It can be seen that

the pattern 3 is mostly found in some sentences of John Denver’s song lyrics. In

this part, the researcher elaborates and presents the sentence patterns, the sentence

types, the tree diagrams, and the phrase structures in detail.

Wild Montana Skies

Sentence 1: His mother took him to her breast, and softly she did sing

The tree diagram above shows the structures and the categories of the whole

lexemes. By looking at the sentence grouping, it could be concluded that it was

compound sentence. Huddleston (1988) asserts that compound sentence contained

two or more main clauses. Therefore, the sentence above was the combination of

two clauses which can stand independently because it was connected by the

conjunction “and”.

Sentence Type Compound Sentence

Sentence Pattern (s)

Sentence I:

Pattern 4: S + Vt + dO + A

Sentence II:

Pattern 8: S + (Emph) + Vi + (A)


33

In order to analyse the sentence patterns, the researcher divided the

compound sentence into Sentence I and Sentence II because analysing sentence

patterns could only be done in a single main clause.

From the analysis, the researcher found that the pattern of Sentence I was

“His mother took him to her breast”. Here, the elements which were identified were

Subject (His mother), Transitive Verb (took), Direct Object (him), and Adverb (to

her breast). Therefore, the elements were combined and it produced the sentence

pattern pattern 4: S + Vt + dO + A (Quirk & Greenbaum, 1973, p. 167).

Sentence II was “she did sing softly”. In this sentence, however, there was

an exception from one of the sentence patterns in the relevant theory. It was because

there was an “Emphasis” element in the sentence. Quirk and Greenbaum (1973) did

not mention the pattern which contained Emphasis within and there was no relevant

sentence pattern theory which included such an element in a sentence. Aside of that,

the adverbial element in here was considered as optional, which meant that it could

be included or not. Therefore, from the analysis, the researcher proposed the

“Emphasis (abbreviated into Emph)” element since the term “Emphasis” was the

widely used in analysing grammar. Therefore, the researcher created a new sentence

pattern, namely pattern 8: S + Emph + Vi.

Syntactically, it can be concluded from the tree diagram that the Inflectional

Phrase (IP) consisted of three elements, namely Inflectional Phrase 1 (IP1),

Conjunction (Conj), and Inflectional Phrase 2 (IP2). In Inflectional Phrase 1, there

were three major syntactic elements; Noun Phrase (NP) + Inflection (Infl) + Verb


34

Phrase (VP). In Noun Phrase, the lexemes His mother (Det + N) functioned as the

Subject (S). The Inflection element was past since the main verb in the sentence

was in the past form. In Verb Phrase, there were several layers which had different

elements functions. The lexemes were took functioned as the Transitive Verb (Vt),

him functioned as the Direct Object (dO), and to her breast functioned as the

Adverb (A). In addition, the conjunction (conj) and was used to connect the

Inflectional Phrase 1 (IP1) and Inflectional Phrase 2 (IP2).

Inflectional Phrase 2 had the same syntactic elements like the ones in the

Inflectional Phrase 1. They were Noun Phrase (NP) + Inflection (Infl) + Verb

Phrase (VP). In Adverbial Phrase, the lexeme softly was considered optional as it

did not always have to appear in the beginning of the sentence (Quirk &

Greenbaum, 1973, p. 167). In Noun Phrase, the lexeme was the pronoun she which

functioned as the Subject of the sentence. Then, the Inflection was in the past form

since the time reference of the main verb was simple past. In Verb Phrase, finally,

there were two categories involved, namely the Emphasis (Emph) did and the

Intransitive Verb (Vi) sing. As far as the researcher knows, there is no Emphasis

category in the tree diagram. Therefore, the researcher used Emph to represent the

emphasis of the sentence.


35

Sentence 2: His mother died that summer and he never learned to cry

From the data above, it can be seen that the type of the sentence was

compound sentence as it had two main clauses and it was connected with

coordinated conjunction and. To analyse the patterns, the sentences were divided

into two parts; Sentence I and Sentence II.



Sentence I:

Pattern 1: S + Vi +A

Sentence II:

Pattern 3: S + (A) + Vt + dO

Sentence I was “His mother died that summer” and it contained the elements

of Subject (His mother), Intransitive Verb (died), and Adverb (that summer). The

elements were combined and it produced pattern 1: S + Vi + A (Quirk &

Greenbaum, 1973, p. 167). Sentence II was “He never learned to cry”. The elements

here were Subject (He), Adverb (never), Transitive Verb (learned), and Direct

Object (to cry) which formed pattern 3: S + (A) + Vt + dO (Quirk & Greenbaum,


36

1973, p. 167). Therefore, it can be concluded that the sentence patterns from

Sentence 2 were pattern 1 and 3.

Syntactically, the tree diagram represented three major categories, namely

Inflectional Phrase 1, Conjunction, and Inflectional Phrase 2. Here, the researcher

proposed the term Infinitive Phrase to be symbolised as InfinP, instead of IP since

there had already been used by Inflectional Phrase (IP). Also, the researcher argued

that the use of IP symbol to represent the term Infinitive Phrase, as used by Andrew

Radford (1997) in his book entitled Syntactic Theory and the Structure of English:

A Minimalist Approach, was not efficient due to the existence of Inflectional Phrase

which was also symbolised as IP. Therefore, the researcher would rather use the

label InfinP than IP to represent Infinitive Phrase.

Sentence 3: He never knew his father and he never did ask why

According to the tree diagram above, it could be could be seen that the type

of the sentence was compound sentence. The sentences were connected by the

conjunction “and”.


37



Sentence I:

Pattern 3: S + (A) + Vt + dO

Sentence II:

Pattern 7: S + (A) + (Emph) + Vi + A

From the analysis, the researcher found that the sentence patterns from the

compound sentence were pattern 3 and pattern 7. The elements of the first sentence

were He as the Subject, never as the Optional Adverb, knew as the Transitive Verb,

and his father as the Direct Object. They were combined together and it formulated

the sentence pattern pattern 3: S + (A) + Vt + dO. In the second sentence, the pattern

was considered as pattern 7 since the main elements of the sentence were Subject

(He), Intransitive Verb (ask), and Adverb (why). In addition, the Optional Adverb

(never) and the Emphasis (did) also appeared before the main verb. Thus, the

researcher concluded that the patterns from both sentences were pattern 3 and

pattern 7.

Regarding the diagram, there were two Inflectional Phrases (IP1 and IP2)

below the main Inflectional Phrase (IP), which each of them has their different

categories. In Inflectional Phrase 1 (IP1), the classification of each category were

Noun Phrase (NP) Pron (He), Inflection (Past), and Verb Phrase (VP) Qual

(never) + Vt (knew) + NP, NP Det (his) + N (father). In Inflectional Phrase 2

(IP2), there were the major syntactic categories were NP Pron (he), Infl Past,

and VP Qual (never) + Emph (did) + Vi (ask), AdvP Adv (why). Again, there

was the new element of Emphasis (Emph) within the Verb Phrase category whose


38

function was to emphasize the main verb. Thus, it can be concluded that the major

syntactic categories of both sentences were NP + Infl + VP.

Sentence 4: He never knew the answers that would make an easy way

The tree diagram above showed that the sentence was categorised as

complex sentence because there were one main clause and one subordinate clause.

The classifications were “He never knew the answers” as the main clause and “that

would make an easy way” as the subordinate clause.

Sentence Type Complex Sentence

Sentence Pattern (s) Pattern 5: S + (A) + Vt + dO + OC

From the analysis, the researcher found that the pattern of sentence 4 was

pattern 5. Quirk and Greenbaum (1973) mentioned that in sentence pattern 5, there

were Subject, Transitive Verb, Direct Object, and Object Complement as the main

elements. In sentence 4, the elements involved were the same as the theory from

them, except that there was an Optional Adverbial before the Transitive Verb. Here,

the classifications of the elements were the lexeme he as the Subject, never as the

Optional Adverb, knew as the Transitive Verb, the answers as the Direct Object,

and that would make an easy as the Adjective Clause which functions as the Object

Complement. Thus, the elements were grouped together and it formed the sentence

pattern 5: S + (A) + Vt + dO + OC.


39

Based on the tree diagram, it can be seen that the Inflectional Phrase

contained three major syntactic elements, such as Noun Phrase, Inflection, and Verb

Phrase. In Noun Phrase, the pronoun He functioned as the Subject. The Inflection

element was past as the main verb of the sentence was in the past form. In Verb

Phrase, there were several layers which had different elements functions; the

qualifier never functioned as the Adverb, knew functioned as the Transitive Verb,

and the answers that would make an easy way functioned as the Noun Phrase. In

addition, the researcher created a triangle layer for the Noun Phrase the answers

that would make an easy way in order to make the analysis faster and shorter.

Sentence 5: He learned to read the seasons and he learned to make a stand

The diagram shows that the type of the sentence was considered as

compound sentence. The first sentence (IP1) was connected to the second sentence

(IP2) by the conjunction “and”.



Sentence I:

Pattern 3: S + Vt + dO

Sentence II:

Pattern 3: S + Vt + dO


40

The results showed that the sentences had the same patterns. It was shown

that both sentences contained similar elements, such as Subject, Transitive Verb,

and Direct Object. In Sentence I, the classification of each element was He as the

subject, learned as the Transitive Verb, and to read the seasons as the Direct Object.

In Sentence II, the elements were He as the subject, learned as the Transitive Verb,

and to make a stand as the Direct Object. Those elements were grouped and it

formed the sentence pattern 3: S + Vt + dO (Quirk & Greenbaum, 1973, p. 167).

Aside of that, the diagram also showed that both Inflectional Phrases (IP1

and IP2) had the same major syntactic categories, namely Noun Phrase, Inflection,

and Verb Phrase. The categories in Inflectional Phrase 1 were NP Pron (He), Infl

(Past), and VP Vt (learned) + InfinP Infin (to) + VP Vt (read) + NP

Det (the) + N (seasons). Inflectional Phrase 2 had the same structures as in

Inflectional Phrase 2, only that their lexical items were different; NP Pron (He),

Infl (Past), and VP Vt (learned) + InfinP Infin (to) + VP Vt (make) + NP

Det (a) + N (stand).

Darcy Farrow

Sentence 1: She promised to wed before the snows came that year


41

The diagram showed that the sentence type was complex sentence since

there were one main clause and one subordinate clause. According to the type of

the clause, it can be considered that the subordinate clause was adverbial clause.



From the analysis, the researcher identified that the sentence contained four

main elements. They were the subject we, the transitive verb promised, the direct

object to wed, and the adverb before the snows came that year. According to Quirk

and Greenbaum (1973), the sentence pattern which had those elements was

considered as pattern 4: S + Vt + dO + A.

In the tree diagram, it could be summarised that there were two Inflectional

Phrases in one sentence. In Inflectional Phrase 1, the major rules were divided into

three major categories, namely Noun Phrase, Inflection, and Verb Phrase. Hence,

the structures of the phrase were NP Pron (She), Infl (Past), and VP Vt

(promised) + InfinP Infin (to) + VP Vi (wed). Inflectional Phrase 2, however,

had different minor structures compared to the previous one. They were NP Det

(the) + N (snows), Infl (Past), and VP Vi (came) + NP Det (that) + N (year).

Both phrases were connected by the subordinate conjunction (Conj) before.


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Sentence 2: Her eyes shone bright like the pretty lights

The sentence which was represented in the tree diagram above was

considered as simple sentence for it only had one main or independent clause.


Sentence Pattern (s) Pattern 2: S + Lv + SC

From the analysis, the researcher found that the sentence pattern as

represented in the diagram was pattern 2. There were three elements of the sentence;

the Subject (Her eyes), Linking Verb (shone), and Subject Complement (bright like

the pretty lights). The elements were combined and it became the sentence pattern

pattern 2: S + Lv + SC. From the tree diagram, then, the major phrase structure

categories were Noun Phrase, Inflection, and Verb Phrase and they were NP Det

(Her) + N (eyes), Infl (Past), and VP Lv (shone) + AP A (bright) + PP P

(like) + NP Det (the) + A (pretty) + N (lights).


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Sentence 3: She was courted by Yound Vandamere

The diagram above shows that the type of the sentence was simple sentence

which was written in the form of passive voice. According to Crystal (2008),

passive voice could be defined as a sentence where the grammatical subject was

typically the recipient or goal of the action which was denoted by the verb.

Sentence Type Simple Sentence (Passive)

Sentence Pattern (s) Pattern 3: S + Vt + dO

From the analysis, the researcher found that the sentence pattern was

considered as pattern 3. There were three main elements found in the sentence,

namely Subject (She), Transitive Verb (was courted), and Direct Object (by Young

Vandamere). Aside of that, the structures of the tree diagram were NP Pron

(She), Infl Aux (was), and VP Vt (courted) + PP P (by) + NP (Young

Vandamere). Thus, the researcher concluded that the sentence pattern was pattern

3: S +Vt + dO.


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Sentence 4: Young Vandy in his pain put a bullet through his brain

From the diagram, it can be seen that the type of the sentence was simple

sentence.



The sentence contained some main elements such as the Subject (Young

Vandy in his pain), Transitive Verb (put), Direct Object (a bullet), and Adverb

(through his brain). The elements were grouped together and they formed pattern

4: S + Vt + dO + A. In analysing the structure of the inflectional phrase, the

researcher found that the major syntactic categories were Noun Phrase, Inflection,

and Verb Phrase. The rules of the structures were NP N (Young Vandy) + PP

P (in) + NP Det (his) + N (pain), Infl (Past), VP Vt (put) + NP Det (a) +

N (bullet) + PP P (through) + NP Det (his) + N (brain).


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Sentence 5: We buried them together as the snows began to fall

The type of the sentence as shown in the diagram above was considered as

complex sentence. It had one main clause and one subordinate clause. In addition,

the subordinate clause was adverbial clause, which functioned as the adverb.


Sentence Pattern (s) Type 4: S + Vt + dO + (A) + A

In the sentence, there were three basic elements and one optional element.

They were we as the subject, buried as the transitive verb, them as the direct object,

together as the optional adverbial, and the adverbial clause as the snow began to

fall as the adverb. Those elements were combined and it produced sentence pattern

4: S + Vt + dO + (A) + A.

From the tree diagram, the researcher found out that there were two

Inflectional Phrases below the main Inflectional Phrase. The phrases were

connected by the adverbial subordinate conjunction “as”. In the first Inflectional

Phrase, the structures of the phrase were NP Pron (We), Infl (Past), and VP


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Vt (buried) + NP Pron (them) + AdvP Adv (together). In the second

Inflectional Phrase, the structures were a bit different compared to the first one.

They were NP Det (the) + N (snow), Infl (Past), and VP Vi (began) + InfinP

Infin (to) + VP Vi (fall).

Poems, Prayers, and Promises

Sentence 1: I’ve been lately thinking about my life’s time

The sentence from the diagram was considered as simple sentence because

there was one main clause only.



After analysing the sentence, the researcher found that the sentence pattern

of the sentence was pattern 3. The sentence had three elements, namely Subject (I),

Transitive Verb (have been lately thinking about), and Direct Object (my life’s

time). The elements were combined together and it formed the sentence pattern

pattern 3: S + Vt + dO (Quirk & Greenbaum, 1973, p. 167).

Syntactically, the sentence consisted of some structures. They were NP

Pron (I) and VP Pres (have) + Prog (been) + Adv (lately) + Vt (thinking) + PP


47

P (about) + NP (my life’s time). Here, there were two lexical items of which the

researcher has never used in drawing the tree diagram; have and been. The

researcher wrote Pres for the lexeme have which meant that it was the Auxiliary

verb for Present Perfect Tense and Prog for the lexeme been to indicate the perfect

continuous tense. Therefore, there were two new labels which were considered new

to the researcher. As an addition, the researcher drew a triangle layer above the

Noun Phrase my life’s time to make it more efficient in analysing the diagram rather

than writing down each of the category.

Sentence 2: I know I’m gonna hate to see it end

The type of the sentence from the tree diagram above was considered as

complex sentence since there was one main clause and one subordinate clause.

Here, the subordinate clause was noun clause.




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Based on the analysis, the researcher identified the sentence pattern was

pattern 3. The elements which were involved in this sentence were Subject (I),

Transitive Verb (know), and Direct Object (I’m gonna hate to see it end). The noun

clause here functioned as the object of the verb know. Aside of that, the analysis

result of the phrase structure was NP Pron (I), Infl (Non-Past), and VP Vt

(know) + CP C (that) + IP NP Pron (I), VP M (am going to) + Vi (hate)

+ InfinP Infin (to) + VP Vt (see) + NP Pron (it) + VP Vi (end). In short,

the elements were put together and it became sentence pattern 3: S + Vt + dO (Quirk

& Greenbaum, 1973, p. 167).

Sentence 3: It’s really fine to have a chance to hang around

The diagram shows that the type of the sentence was considered as simple

sentence. It only had one main clause which meant that it could stand by itself.


Sentence Pattern (s) Pattern 2: S + Lv + (A) + SC + (A) +

(A)


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There were three basic elements and three optional elements within the

sentence. In the basic elements, there were Subject (It), Linking Verb (is), and

Subject Complement (fine). The optional elements, then, were three optional

adverbs. One of them was placed before the Subject Complement and the others

were after it. The first, second, and third adverbs were really, to have a chance, and

to hang around. At last, the elements were put together and they resulted sentence

pattern 2: S + Lv + (A) + SC + (A) + (A) (Quirk & Greenbaum, 1973, p. 167).

The major phrase structure categories were analysed by the researcher and

the results were Noun Phrase and Verb Phrase. In Noun Phrase, the structures were

NP Pron (It). In Verb Phrase, the structures were VP Lv (is) + AP Adv

(really) + A (fine) + InfinP Infin (to) + VP Vt (have) + NP Det (a) + N

(chance) + InfinP Infin (to) + VP (hang around).

Sentence 4: Time around me whispers when it’s cold

The diagram above represents the picture of the structure and type of the

sentence. It is found that the type of the sentence is complex sentence, which means

that the sentence contains one main clause and one subordinate clause. Further, the


50

subordinate clause here is considered as adverbial clause since its subordinate

conjunction is the adverb of time.


Sentence Pattern (s) Pattern 1: S + Vi + (A)

The sentence here contains three elements which forms the sentence pattern.

The main elements are the subject (Time around me) and the Intransitive Verb

(whispers), while the other one is Optional Adverb in the form of adverbial clause

(when it is cold). It can be summarised that from the elements involved, the sentence

pattern is pattern 1: S + Vi + (A) (Quirk & Greenbaum, 1973, p. 167).

Syntactically, the major phrase structure categories in the sentence are Noun

Phrase, Inflection, and Verb Phrase. The classification of each structure is: NP

N (Time) + PP P (around) + NP N (me), Infl (Non-Past), and VP Vi

(whispers). The inflectional phrase 1, then, is connected to the inflectional phrase 2

by using the subordinate conjunction (Conj) when. In inflectional phrase 2, the

structures are NP Pron (it) and VP Lv (is) + AP A (cold).

Sentence 5: I’d like to raise a family


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From the tree diagram, it can be seen that the type of the sentence was simple

sentence.



The sentence in the diagram contained three major elements, namely

Subject (I), Transitive Verb (would like to raise), and Direct Object (a family). The

elements were put together and it formed sentence pattern 3: S + Vt + dO (Quirk &

Greenbaum, 1973, p. 167). Meanwhile, in the phrase structure analysis, the

researcher found that the major categories were Noun Phrase and Verb Phrase.

Their structures were NP Pron (I) and VP M (would like to) + Vt (raise) +

NP Det (a) + N (family).

Take Me Home, Country Roads

Sentence 1: Life is old there


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The tree diagram above shows that the sentence type was simple sentence

as it contained one main clause only.


Sentence Pattern (s) Pattern 2: S + Lv + SC + (A)

The sentence “Life is old there” consisted of three main elements and one

optional element. The main elements of the sentence were the Subject (Life),

Linking Verb (is), and Subject Complement (old), while the optional element was

the Adverb (there). Then, those elements were combined and it created sentence

pattern 2: S + Lv + SC + (A) (Quirk & Greenbaum, 1973, p. 167). Syntactically,

the inflectional phrase contained two major categories, namely Noun Phrase and

Verb Phrase. The phrase structures of the categories were NP N (Life) and VP

LV (is) + AP A (old) + AdvP Adv (there).

Sentence 2: All my memories gather round her


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The diagram shows that the type of the sentence was simple sentence.



In the sentence “All my memories gather round her”, there were three main

elements, namely Subject (All my memories), Transitive Verb (gather round), and

Direct Object (her). Then, from the tree diagram, the inflectional phrase contained

two major categories; Noun Phrase and Verb Phrase. The structures of the phrases

were NP Det (All) + A (my) + N (memories) and VP Vt (gather) + PP P

(round) + NP Pron (her). Based on the elements involved, the researcher

concluded that the sentence pattern was pattern 3: S + Vt + dO (Quirk &

Greenbaum, 1973, p. 167).

Sentence 3: I hear her voice in the morning hour

The diagram shows that the type of the sentence was simple sentence.




54

There were four main elements in the sentence, namely the Subject (I),

Transitive Verb (hear), Direct Object (her voice), and Adverb (in the morning

hour). Aside of that, the result of analysing the tree diagram were that the major

categories from the Inflectional Phrase were Noun Phrase and Verb Phrase. Then,

the structures of the phrases were NP Pron (I) and VP Vt (hear) + NP Det

(her) + N (voice) + PP P (in) + Det (the) + N (morning) + N (hour). To

summarise, those four elements of the sentence were combined and it formed

sentence pattern 4: S + Vt + dO + A (Quirk & Greenbaum, 1973, p. 167).

Sentence 4: The radio reminds me of my home far away

The tree diagram above shows that the type of the sentence was simple

sentence.


Sentence Pattern (s) Pattern 4: S + Vt + dO + A + (A)


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The sentence “The radio reminds me of my home far away” contained four

Documents

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