1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 The Background of the Study It
is language, more obviously than anything else, that it is able to distinguish man from the rest
of the animal world. At one time it was common to define man as a thinking animal, but we can
hardly imagine thought without words–not
thought that is at all precise, anyway. More recently, man has often been described as a tool-making animal; but
language itself is most remarkable tool
that man has invented, and is the one that makes all the others possible. The most primitive tools, admittedly, may have
come early than language: the higher apes
sometimes use sticks for digging, and have even been observed to break sticks for this purpose. But tools of any
greater sophistication demand the kind of human co-operation and division of labor which
is hardly possible without language.
Language, in fact, is the great machineor tool which is able to make human culture possible.
Other animals, it is true, communicate with
one another, or at any rate stimulate
one another to action, by means of cries. Many birds utter warning calls at the approach of danger, some animals have
mating calls; apes utter different cries
expressive of anger, fear, pleasure. But these various means of communication differ in important ways from
human language. Animal’s cries are not
articulate. This means, basically, they lack structure. They lack, for example,
the kind of structure given by the
contrast between vowels and consonants. They also lack the kind of structure that enables
to divide a human utterance into words.
We can change an utterance by replacing one
word in it by another : a sentry can say
‘Thanks approaching from the north’, or he can change one word and say ‘Aircraft approaching from the north’; but a
bird has a single indivisible alarm cry,
which means ‘Danger!’ This is way the number of signals that an animal can make is very limited: the Great Tit has about
twenty different calls, where as in human
language the number of possible utterance is infinite. It also explains why animal cries are very general in meaning.
These differences will become clearer if we consider some of the characteristics of
human language.
A human language is a signaling system. As its
materials, it uses vocal sounds. It is
important to remember that basically a language is something which is spoken: the written language is secondary
and derivative. In the history of its individual,
speech is learned before writing, and there is a good reason for believing that the same was true in the
history of the race. There are primitive communities that have speech without writing,
but we know of no human society which
has a written language without a spoken one. Such things as the sign language of deaf and dumb people are not
exceptions to this rule: even if used by people who cannot speak, and have never been
able to speak, these languages are derived
from the spoken language of the community around them.
The vocal sounds which provide the materials
for a language are produced by the
various speech organs, the production of sounds requires energy, and this is ally supplied by the diaphragm and the chest
muscles, which enable us to send a flow
of breath up from the lungs. Some languages use additional sources of energy : it is possible to make noises by
muscular movements of the tongue, and popping
noises by the movements of the cheeks and lips, and such sounds are found for example in some of the languages of
Africa. But in English we rely on the
outflow of air from the lungs, which is modified in various ways by the 'set'
of the organs that is passes through
before emerging at the mouth or nose.
It is clear, if we look and listen, that
language is used for more than one purpose,
The man who hits his thumb-nail with a hammer and utters a string of curses is using language for an expressive
purpose: he is relieving his feelings, and
needs no audience but himself. People can often be heard playing with language: children especially like using
language as if it were toy, repeating, distorting,
inventing, punning, jingling; and there is a play element in the use of language in some literature, but when the philosopher
uses language to clarify his ideas on a
subject, he is using it as an instrument of thought, when two women gossip over the fence, or two men exchange
conventional greetings as they pass in the
street, language is being used to strengthen the bonds of cohesion between the members of a society. Language, it seems, is a
multi-purpose instrument.
One function, however, seems to be basic:
language enables us to influence people's
behavior, and to influence it in detail, and thereby makes human cooperation
possible, some animals cooperate, especially the social animals like bees and ants: but human co-operation is more
thorough, more detailed, more effective
than that found anywhere in the animal kingdom, and no animal society has a division of labor or a system of
production at all comparable to those of human societies. This human co-operation would
be unthinkable without language, and it
is obviously this function of language that has made it so successful andso important; other functions
can be looked upon as by-products.
A
language, of course, always belongs to a group of people, not to an individual; the group that uses any given
language is called the speech community.
A language, then, is a signaling system which operates with symbolic vocal sounds, and which is used by some group
of people for the purposes of communication
and social co-operation. With this definition in mind, let us turn to the problem of the origins and early history
of human language.
1.2 The Problem of the Study a) What are the
tenses used in the Jakarta Post Newspaper? b) What is the Frequency of the
tenses used in the Jakarta Post? 1.3 The Scope of the Study A limitation is
very important for any kind of writing, because the writing will go so vast without having the scope to be
written. Therefore, the writer of this paper
on this circumstance wants to limit his description deal with the numbers of tenses used by the journalist to spread the
news, and so the frequency of the tenses used. The writer believes that in giving a
description to the used tenses will be so complicated as we can realize that English
itself has sixteen different tenses.
1.4 The Objectives of the Study The objectives
of writing the description of the tenses used in the Jakarta Post which is published on Tuesday, July th , 2013 are to find out the numbers of the tenses used and so the frequency of the
tenses applied by the journalist to send the news through the newspaper to its readers.
1.5 Method of the Study When someone wants to
write any writing he or he has his or her choice to select the methods he or she to be applied. It
will be depended on the kinds of writing
she or he wants to take. If the required data will not be available in written text of course he or she needs some informants
to be treated as the resources of the
data. The writer of this paper does not use informant to be treated as the resources of the data, because all the
required data can be taken in written text, therefore he applies the library research.
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