The Use of Syntactic Structures in The Jakarta Post Breaking News

Keywords: Syntactic structures, The Jakarta Post, Breaking News, sentence Nowadays English is the most popular language in the world. Many mass media publishing use English in reporting news or information to the reader or listener. Such news can be reported in the spoken language or written form. The Jakarta Post is one of media publishing that publish news and article in written form in English. It’s not only publish news in paper edition but also electronic one which can be accessed online. One of the advantages accessing The Jakarta Post online is it provide a special feature which is updated every time namely Breaking News. By this feature, the reader can read the most actual information around the world which can’t be found in paper edition. In order to be meaningful information, the reader have to understand its content. One of the way to understand such information, the reader need to know its sentence structure. Therefore, Syntax is a suitable study to discuss the sentence structure. Through this study, it will be easy to understand the use of syntactic structures in The Jakarta Post Breaking News. The formulation of research problems are: 1) what types of syntactic structures occur in The Jakarta Post breaking news sentences?2)What componential variety forming syntactic structures in The Jakarta Post breaking news sentences? 3) How is the frequency of components forming each syntactic structure in The Jakarta Post breaking news sentences? While the objectives of this study are: 1)to find out the types of syntactic structures used in The Jakarta Post breaking news sentences.2) To find out the componential variety forming syntactic structures in The Jakarta Post breaking news sentence, and 3) to find out the frequency of component forming each syntactic structure in The Jakarta Post breaking news sentences. The research design of this study is quantitative survey. The population and sample of this study are 170 sentences in The Jakarta Post Breaking News which were published on February 2014. Such data were gotten by accessing The Jakarta Post website under the address www.thejakartapost.com. The data collection method which was used is document note taking by using document as the instrument. The data was analyzed by using Chinese boxes and then analyzed the frequency by percentage. The result of data analysis, 1)there are four syntactic structures which constructed the topic sentence of The Jakarta Post Breaking News: Structure of predication, structure of modification, structure of complementation and structure of coordination. 2)The componential variety forming syntactic structure in The Jakarta Post sentences are:Simple Component: Structure of Predication (Single word as subject); Structure of Modification (verb as head, adverb as modifier, noun as modifier, and adjective as modifier); Structure of Complementation (verb as verbal element, adverb as complement, and single word as complement), Complex Component: Structure of Predication (noun phrase as subject, structure of coordination as subject, structure of modification as subject, verb phrase as predicate, structure of modification as predicate, and structure of complementation as predicate); Structure of Modification (verb phrase as head, prepositional phrase as modifier, structure of complementation as modifier, structure of modification as modifier, and structure of coordination as modifier); Structure of Complementation (verb phrase as verbal element, structure of modification as verbal element, structure of predication as complement, structure of modification as complement, and structure of coordination as complement); Structure of Coordination (Structure of predication). 3) The frequency of component forming each syntactic structure are: Structure of Predication (simple component occur 62 times with percentage 18.2%; complex component occur 278 times with percentage 81.8%); Structure of Modification (simple component occur 53 times with percentage 38.5%; complex component occur 83 times with percentage 61.5%); Structure of Complementation (simple component occur 72 times with percentage 36%; complex component occur 128 times with percentage 44%); Structure of Coordination (complex component occur 5 times with percentage 100%)