The Non Finite Verb Phrases

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Introduction

Newspapers are one of the most popular media omnipresent globally. Their role in informing the public has remained equally important despite the ever-growing popularity of other forms of media nowadays. The writing in newspapers is characterized by a specific language marked by a distinct style and register. This type of language is called block language, headlinese, or telegraphic speech.

A type of structure different from normal clause or sentence structure, but often conveying a complete message. Block language is found especially in notices and newspaper headlines. It sometimes consists of single noun phrases (e.g. No exit, Essex's snappy reply to a negative image). Other block language has a sort of abbreviated clause structure, with articles, auxiliary verbs, and other minor words omitted (e.g. Tanks met by rain of stones, 19 dockers dismissed unfairly, Jailed racing driver's bail request rejected).

http://www.answers.com/topic/block-language#ixzz2PxjPEmtO

The features of this type of language "are common in certain types of written language, such as notices, headlines, labels, advertisements, subheadings, Web sites and other settings where a message is presented as a 'block' ". (Crystal 2003: 216)

In printing, reasons of space and the intention to inform quickly about the relevant facts led to the use of different typefaces (bold, large capitals for emphasis) and a reduction of the full syntax. The phenomenon is found especially in newspaper headlines, book titles, marginal summaries of chapters and advertisements and lists of contents in 'prospectuses' of books--in all these the tendency is towards explicitness in 1800, but for truncated sentences in 1900. This curtailment is achieved mainly through omissions (of articles, titles or the copula), and is supported by a special lexis of short words.

(Manfred Görlach, English in Nineteenth-Century England. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999)

http://grammar.about.com/od/ab/g/blocklanguageterm.htm

The main purpose of newspaper headlines is to attract readers’ attention by being concise "relevance optimizers" (Dor 2003: 696) for readers, meaning that they represent one of the main prerequisites to the readers’ choice whether to read the article or not. This is not only achieved by the means of distinguishing vocabulary, but also by utilizing specific syntactic features, depending on the individual language community’s culture and target audience. Newspaper headlines represent one of the greatest challenges when it comes to foreign language learning and, therefore, need be dealt with special focus on differences and similarities between the cultures in question. The aim of this paper is to approach these aspects in a systematic, contrastive way by comparing the syntactic characteristics of the English and Serbian language in daily newspaper headlines. The hypothesis of this research is that there will be more similarities than differences in the headline syntactic features of these languages.

Review of the related literature

Having in mind the utmost importance of headlines in the media and everyday lives, it comes as no surprise that headlines have been studied thoroughly to a great extent. Although these studies have been conducted mainly in the field of journalism, there is a plethora of various linguistic papers on this topic. A number of these studies will be reviewed below.

Among the most prominent researchers on this topic is undoubtedly Daniel Dor with his paper "On Newspaper Headlines as Relevance Optimizers" (2003). He conducted an empirical study to explain what is required to produce a successful headline, which is: knowing your readers, their beliefs, expectations, as well as an understanding of the story.

Another research regarding this matter was carried out by Jonathan Pierrel (2009) who builds up on Dor’s findings comparing English and French newspaper headlines. His aim was to see how the syntactic features of newspaper headlines of these languages may be used in order to fulfill Dor’s principles.

When it comes to Serbian authors dealing with this particular topic, Maja Matić ??? provided an insight into headlines sentence forms in Serbian newspapers. She investigated the frequency of particular verb forms used in different sentence types.

Dinko Petriševac in his study "Obilježja novinskih naslova" (???) described and analyzed the role and features of newspaper headlines suggesting the division by J. Silić (2006) which is made according to the content and the way the content is realized. This division identifies three types of headlines: nominal, informative and suggestive.

1.2 Method

To carry out the comparison between the headlines in English and Serbian daily papers, the corpora were created collecting headlines from four online news sources, two per language - The Guardian and The New York Times, and Politika and Danas for English and Serbian, respectively. The headlines were randomly selected from six newspaper sections: politics, sports, society, economics, culture, and technology. The corpora were gathered between March 22 and April 7, 2013. The number of titles amounted to 1077, divided as presented in the following table:

Table 1 – Corpus

Corpus

Politics

Sports

Society

Economics

Culture

Technology

Total

English

64

116

54

106

88

86

514

Serbian

99

104

99

90

88

83

563

Total

163

220

153

196

176

169

1077

The grammatical framework of this paper relies on "Gramatika srpskog jezika za gimnazije i srednje škole" by Stanojčić and Popović (2008) and "A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language", Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svatvik (1985).

The analysis begins with the definitions of the grammatical units in the headlines supported by the adequate examples chosen randomly from the collected corpora. The similarities and differences in the syntax of the two languages can be seen in two pairs of examples per each headline category.

Analysis

According to Crystal "syntax is the way in which words are arranged to show relations of meaning within (and sometimes between) sentences." (Crystal 2003: 94)

The description of syntactic features in this paper is based on the division of the headlines according to two criteria: type and function. Special emphasis is put on the reduction of headline phrases.

2.1 Headline types

In order to form a general picture of the given headline’s structure, the corpus was divided into three basic groups: nominal, verbal and adverbial, depending on the type of the most prominent phrase. The examples provided after each section were chosen randomly.

Nominal headlines

A nominal headline is a headline in which the most important element is a noun phrase. According to Quirk et al., "noun phrases consist of a head, which is typically a noun, and of elements which (either obligatorily or optionally) determine the head and (optionally) modify the head, or complement another element in the phrase." (Quirk et al. 1985: 62) Noun phrases can be: unmodified, premodified, postmodified or both pre and postmodified, according to the position of the elements that modify the head.

Unmodification

Unmodified noun phrases represent structures in which the head is not modified by any other element. Examples:

1. Feminism 'has failed working-class women'

2. Ministers want low-paid workers to put in more hours

3. Алфа

4. Energetika

Premodification

Premodified noun phrases are those in which the head is preceded by an element/s that modify(s) it. Examples:

1. Cypriot economic model is broken, warn financial advisers

2. Hungry Photography

3. Почиње обука резервиста цивилне заштите

4. Tužni jubilej

Postmodification

Postmodification refers to noun phrases in which the head is followed by elements that modify it. Examples:

1. March of the makers? Balance of payment figures make dismal reading

2. The Joke’s on Louis C.K.

3. Стручњаци у приправности због вируса „западног Нила"

4. Чикарић: За раст оболелих од рака крив осиромашени уранијум

Pre+Postmodification

This type of modification can be found in those noun phrases in which the head is both preceded and followed by some elements. Examples:

1. No news on Xbox, but huge power of PlayStation 4 excites games fair fans

2. The Vulnerable Side of Lara Croft

3. Папрена цена погрешне препоруке

4. Варљиви сјај шопинг молова

Verbal headlines

Verbal headlines are dominated by a verb phrase. A verb phrase "consists of a main verb which either stands alone as the entire verb phrase, or is preceded by up to four verbs in an auxiliary function." (Quirk et al. 1985: 62) Verb phrases can be classified into following categories: non-finite and finite. Apart from these, another category that will be discussed is that of verbless headlines.

Non-finite verb phrases

Non-finite verb phrases are those in which the head, i.e. the verb lacks tense, number and mood. These include: "infinitive, the –ing participle, and –ed participle". (Quirk et al. 1985: 150) Examples:

1. Asda welfare cards to be given to Birmingham's poor

2. Figuring out jobseeker sanctions

3. Заслужен пораз у Загребу, наш тим све даље од Бразила

4. Otvorena apoteka u naselju „Nikola Tesla" u Pančevu

2.1.2.2 Finite verb phrases

A verb phrase in which the verb indicates tense is a finite verb phrase. Apart from tense, finite verb phrases can be marked for: aspect, mood, voice and number.

1. A Phoenix is Rising on Point

2. Labour demands action over jobcentre targets

3. Култура постаје привилегија богатих

4. Dačić: Neće biti izbora

Verbless headlines

Verbless headlines are characterized by constructions in which a verb element is implied but not present. The verb mostly omitted is to be. They may function in the same ways as finite and non-finite clauses.

1. Scotch whisky sales on the slide

2. Our Lady on the Fragile Humanity

3. Упркос препоруци ђаци иду на екскурзије у иностранство

4. Bajern rutinski

2.1.3 Adverbial phrases

Adverbial headlines are those headlines that include adverbial phrases. "An adverbial phrase consists of an adverb as head, optionally preceded or followed by modifying elements." (Quirk et al. 1985: 63) Adverbial phrases may denote: manner, place, time, duration, frequency, etc.

1. After Cyprus, how many more crises can the euro survive?

2. Months After Massacre, Obama Seeks to Regain Momentum on Gun Laws

3. Dobrovoljno spuštaju cene od pet do 15 odsto

4. Ćutanjem prikrivaju katastrofu

2.2 Headline types by function

Headlines can be divided into four functional types: statements, questions, commands and exclamations. Generally, it seems that statements constitute the largest part of the both corpora, while questions, commands and exclamations are rare in both samples.

2.2.1 Statements

"A statement headline describes a state of affairs, actions, feelings or belief." (Khodabandeh 2007: 99)

1. Investments in Education May Be Misdirected

2. The Debate on Bank Size Is Over

3. Ako ne bude dogovora, sledi putinizacija Srbije

4. Ustanove kulture služe da se prostiru gaće

2.2.2 Questions

"A question headline is addressed to a reader or listener and asks for an expression of fact, opinion, belief, etc. " (Khodabandeh 2007: 99) Our findings suggest that the most frequent question headlines are in the form of declarative sentences in which the question function is achieved through intonation or/and a question mark at the end of the headline.

1. Can India’s new laws stop rape?

2. Drones: A Booming Business?

3. Ko je napravio grešku u koracima?

4. Jat otkazuje letove zbog problema s flotom?

2.2.3 Commands

"A command headline expresses a request or advice." (Khodabandeh 2007: 99) Command headlines are very rare.

1. Lean In, Dad

2. If a Fund Turns on a Dime, Watch Your Dollars

3. Хочевар: Не губите Господа из својих очију

4. Hapsiti odgovorne

2.2.4 Exclamations

"An exclamation headline shows the writer's or speaker's feelings." (Khodabandeh 2007: 99) Exclamations are the least frequent type of the headlines found in the corpora.

No example from the English corpus.

1. Мркоњић: Свака част Динкићу!

2. Niko više u Beogradu neće paliti ambasade!

2.3 Reduction of phrases

Reduction is one of the most noted characteristics of the block language due to its saving space in newspaper headlines. Special focus was laid on the omission of articles and the copula. What is most noticeable in the contrastive analysis of Serbian and English is that Serbian has no article system (thus, the zero correspondence), while the English headlines save space by omitting this grammatical feature. The most omitted copular verb in headlines is to be.

2.3.1 Omission of articles

Articles are primary determiners that modify the head of the noun phrase and "indicate the type of reference made by the noun phrase" (definiteness or indefiniteness). (Carter, McCarthy 2006: 322)

1. Polly Toynbee: _latest cure for NHS could kill the patient

2. _Police commissioner backs _teenage adviser after ‘youthful boasting’ tweets

No examples from the Serbian corpus.

2.3.2 Omission of the copula

A copular verb connects the subject of a sentence with a subject complement.

1. Kevin Pietersen expected to play 'full part' in Ashes despite knee injury

2. UK immigration rhetoric 'shameful'

3. "Ферари" представио "458 спајдер"

4. Обележен Дан независности Грчке

Conclusion

The aims of this research were: to identify the major syntactic principles by which a newspaper headline is constructed, establish contrastive analysis of the syntactic features of newspaper headlines in English and Serbian, and to determine to what extent these are similar or different. As results of the research show, the initial hypothesis that there would be more similarities than differences regarding the syntactic characteristics of headlines in four English and Serbian daily papers is confirmed. The most distinct similarities concern headline types; in both corpora the amount of nominal and verbal headlines significantly outnumbered that of adverbial ones. In terms of the structure of headlines, verbless headlines are the least frequent type of constructions. When it comes to headline functions, results suggest that declarative statements are as frequent as question ones, whereas commands and exclamations do not occur as often. In cases where there is no question mark at the end of a headline, the function of a question is accomplished through intonation. The initial hypothesis was confirmed in respect of the similarities concerning copular verbs, i.e. the omission of the verb to be is present in both corpora equally. However, apart from the lack of article system in Serbian, contrary to research expectations, the definite article is not omitted in English headlines as often as it was expected.

To sum up, it was concluded that the headlines of English and Serbian are similar in the occurrence of verbal and nominal phrases, headline functions and omission of certain words. Furthermore, it should be pointed out that no greater differences were found.

3. 1 Implications of the English and Serbian headlines contrastive analysis

A significant number of implications can be drawn from this research, such as those for teaching a foreign language and translation.

As Khodabandeh (2007:xx) states:

Many students of English find that newspaper headlines are especially difficult to understand. (…) The language of headlines is special and has its own characteristics on the lexical, syntactic and rhetorical levels (…) There is, however, a clear pattern in this special genre; once the rules and tactics are understood a lot of difficulties may disappear.

Another major implication of being familiar with similarities and differences in newspaper headline patterns is in translation, that is, the message needs to be conveyed in a proper way without creating obstacles for the headline comprehension; the essence of the meaning remains unchanged in a foreign language if it is clear what the contrast between the grammatical features of the languages is.