crutiny of Phrase Structures in Headlines of Editorials: Sri Lankan English Weekly Newspapers

Abstract

The aim of this study was to ascertain the extent of the usage of syntax, phrase structures to be specific, in newspaper editorial headlines. This report is initiated with an insight into the study of language, newspaper editorial and editorial headline; with detailed descriptions of parts of speech and relevant phrase structures. Subsequently findings on research carried out by other researchers on similar areas, are listed in a nutshell. Sixty editorial headlines from the English weekly newspapers, Sunday Island and The Sunday Times, over the period January to July 2016, were the primary data analyzed. These newspapers were preferred based on a quantitative survey carried out to determine readership among young learners. The secondary data were gathered by exploring the theoretical background and literature review; and the theory, Phrase Structure Rules, was adopted for the analysis. A qualitative analysis on word orders was carried out based on parts of speech to categorize the identified phrases, such as, noun phrases, noun phrases with noun possessives, verb phrases with present participles, verb phrases with imperative verbs and prepositional phrases. Whilst 37% of the corpus of headlines of newspaper editorials comprises of the abovementioned phrases; minor deviations of 5% of the corpus were analyzed by hypothetical means to conform to phrase structure rules. The balance 58% does not belong to the syntactic categories of phrase structures mentioned above. Other vital aspects of syntax, such as, prepositions, articles, modifiers, etc., could also be taught with the use of newspaper editorial headlines. More importantly this research reveals that second language and/or foreign language teachers would benefit using newspaper editorial headlines as teaching devices to educate young learners on syntactic knowledge