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 Universitas Sumatera Utara 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 Universitas
Sumatera Utara 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.
Universitas Sumatera Utara 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 Universitas Sumatera Utara 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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