An Analysis of Noun Phrase Structures Used in the  Bangkok Post Headlines

Nattakan Sengchuen

doi:10.14456/psruhss.2022.17

Authors

Nattakan Sengchuen Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Phibunsongkhram Rajabhat University, Phitsanulok 65000

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14456/psruhss.2022.17

Keywords:

Noun Phrase Structure, Noun Phrase, English Headline

Abstract

The study aimed to analyze the structures of noun phrases and find out the frequency of occurrence of each structural type of noun phrases used in the English headlines including sports news, economic and business news, criminal news, and political news in the Bangkok Post and to examine the features of English headlines of sports news, economic and business news, criminal news, and political news in the Bangkok Post, which further contributes for useful guidelines on teaching development. The samples used for this study were 588 English headlines of sports news, economic and business news, criminal news, and political news in the Bangkok Post, which were selected by purposive sampling. The instruments consisted of two structural types of noun phrases based on the classification of Banpho (2000) : ‘Pre-modifier + Noun’ and ‘Noun + Post-modifier’. The data were analyzed and then compared among different English headlines. The research statistics for data analysis was frequency and percentage. Overall, the results revealed that two structural types of noun phrases occurred in the English headlines of four genres of news. ‘Pre-modifier + Nouns’ were found in 359 English headlines with the percentage of 62.35% and ‘Noun + Post-modifiers’ were found in 229 English headlines with the percentage of 37.65%. According to each genre of news, it was found that ‘Pre-modifier + Noun’ was mostly used in the Political news, with the percentage of 67.94%, followed by the Criminal news, with the percentage of 66.7%, and the Economic and Business news, with the percentage of 65.54%. As for the Sports news, ‘Noun + Post-modifier’ was mostly used with the percentage of 50.8%. In terms of ‘Pre-modifier + Noun’, the findings showed that Adjective Phrase was used the most with the percentage of 42.21% and Adverb Phrase was used least with the percentage of 0.83. The findings further revealed that Adjective Phrase appeared mostly in the Sports news and the Economic and Business news with the percentage of 46.15% and 45.36%. In terms of ‘Noun + Post-modifier,’ the findings showed that Prepositional Phrase was mostly used with the percentage of 74.72%, and Apposition was least used with the percentage of 1.19%. The findings further revealed that Prepositional Phrase mainly appeared in the Sports news with the percentage of 81.91%.

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