Unit 4 grammatical and syntactical properties of newspaper articles

Grammatical properties of newspaper articles

Newspaper articles are characterised by the following grammatical properties.

1. Verbal constructions (infinitive, participial, gerundial):

To trap men in the not-inconvenient rut of being undomesticated will, in the longer term, only narrow women’s option;

Asked about Cameron and chancellor George Osborne, Johnson said: “I want to be able to talk to them.”

2. Infinitive complexes, especially nominative ones to avoid mentioning of the source of information. Something / somebody is alleged (known; revealed; said; believed; reported; thought, etc.) to do something:

David Cameron is unlikely to be impressed by the way Johnson has attempted to distance himself from the Conservative-led government this week.

3. Attributive groups of nouns (the so-called stone wall constructions) comprising from two to three and more nouns.

The one-billion-pound-a-year pig farming industry is in crisis;

But David Willetts, the Conservative universities minister…

4. Possessive (Genitive) case with names of countries, cities, areas, enterprises, firms, time of day, etc.: today’s weather; this hour’s headlines; Britain’s industry; Rover’s future instead of corresponding adjectives (British industry) or combinations of nouns with of-preposition (the future of Rover):

In his response to the government’s consultation, Johnson said …

“The high number of teenagers killed on London’s streets so far this year is an example of where no progress has been made.”

Syntactical properties of newspaper articles

Newspaper articles list the following syntactical properties.

1. Complex sentences made up of several subordinate clauses:

Johnson today said he had waited until now because he wanted to look at his record in office into his four-year term before making a final declaration, admitting that there had been a “certain amount of nail-biting” over his flagship bike hire scheme, which was launched in the summer to popular acclaim.

2. Compound sentences with a developed system of dependent clauses:

Johnson’s campaign plans are already under way, it emerged today, with fundraising plans and key team members in place, including Australian political strategist Lynton Crosby, who was enlisted on Johnson’s 2008 mayoral campaign;

Bale, 45, who is the subject of an RSPCA investigation and is said to live just half a mile from the scene of the cat’s 15-hour incarceration in Coventry, told the Sun that she did “not deserve to be hated” for her moment of madness.

3. News article is usually broken up into a number of paragraphs with a sentence standing for a new paragraph. It makes the article easier to perceive and understand:

Enormous inefficiencies within the public sector make it plausible for a large reduction in its cost to be achieved with a minimal impact upon the standards of service it offers;

That would require senior managers to identify savings that do not hit frontline capacity but instead reduce non-essential activities and raise productivity.

4. Special word order (Who? – What? – Why? – How? – Where? – When?) or Subject – Predicate – (+Object) – Adverbial modifier of reason (manner) – Adverbial modifier of place – Adverbial modifier of time:

The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said authorities were caught off-guard by the disaster because the reservoir had been inspected only two weeks earlier and no irregularities had been found.