SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This thesis presents a Syntactic description of the language of English Press headlines. It is divided into three parts which are preceded by a table of contents, a preface, a list of abbreviations, some notes on the methodology of research and system of notation; and are followed by a bibliography. Part One, which consists of two chapters, presents the theoretical background of both the earlier approaches to the subject (Chapter I) and the grammatical technique employed here (Chapter II). Part Two comprises three chapters, the first of which (Chapter III) presents the various types of headlines, the second (Chapter IV) relates the structure of Headlinese to that, of the Norm, and the third (Chapter V) discusses the issues resulting from the application of Case Grammar to headlines. Part Three which constitutes the major part of the thesis presents us with a detailed analysis of the main types of headlines: the Verbal Multinodal (Chapter VI), the Nominal Multinodal (Chapter VII), and the Uninodal Type (Chapter VIII), and relates their' deep structure to their surface sequential order, through the use of' 'patterning'. Each chapter is preceded by a table of contents listing its constituent sections.