Ellipsis in English Printed Media Headlines

Abstract

Aims of this research are to describe the omitted words in the English printed media headline and to describe the types of English ellipsis. This research employs a descriptive analytical method. The sources of the data are headlines from two newspapers namely The Jakarta Post, The Straits Times and two magazines namely Newsweek and Time. After finding 100 data, this research classified ellipsis into three main categories and their sub-categories. This research took 30 out of 100 data to be interpreted or discussed. The theories used in this research were the theory of ellipsis mainly taken from Halliday and Hasan (1976) and the theory of headline was taken from wikipedia. The findings of this research covered two main points. First, the omitted word in the clausal ellipsis is clause namely subject-verb. The omitted words in the nominal ellipsis are elements of noun groups, namely determiner, noun phrase, qualifier, and word part. Meanwhile, the omitted words in the verbal ellipsis are a verb or verbs namely lexical verb and operator verb. Second, the types of ellipsis are clausal ellipsis, nominal ellipsis, and verbal ellipsis. Those types fit to the categories stated in the theoretical reviews based on the data found in printed media headlines