A syntactical analysis on sentence patterns used in Westlife’s song lyrics

Language plays an important role in human life as a means of communication. It is actually the realization of the examples of written works. The writer chooses the song to be analyzed because studying song is not merely analyzing its figurative language, the meaning of words and the language style, but also analyzing the sentence patterns of the lyrics. Therefore, the researcher took a syntactical analysis on sentence patterns used in Westlife’s song lyrics.

In analyzing the material, the writer used some theories which are suitable with the subject. The theory of tree diagram proposed by Diana D. Bornstein is used to analyze sentences into each of the content of the sentence. In order to have deep understanding in syntax, the reseracher than chooses the material from one of Westlife’s albums entitle Westlife Deluxe.

This thesis employs descriptive qualitative method. The steps in taking and collecting the data are reading the lyrics of the songs, listening to the cassette, and selecting the songs as the samples and writing down the three lyrics of the selected songs.

Having analyzed the data, the writer finally found seventeen kinds of the sentence patterns. The most sentence patterns of the lyrics used as the samples are kernel sentences and transformed sentences. Through the discussion, the researcher also found the substandard English words, such as I’ve, ‘cause, and gonna. The sentence patterns of the Westlife’s songs consists of noun phrase plus verb phrase, some sentences consist of conjunction plus noun phrase plus verb phrase, some sentences consist of adverb of place plus noun phrase plus verb phrase.