A SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS OF THE MAMAS AND THE PAPASS SONG

LYRICS TITLED CALIFORNIA DREAMING

A MINI RESERACH PAPER

Submitted as a Fullfillment of Linguistics Mid-Term Assignment

By:

Lita Tri Lestari

MAGISTER PROGRAM OF ENGLISH EDUCATION

TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION FACULTY

SULTAN AGENG TIRTAYASA UNIVERSITY

2017
A SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS OF THE MAMAS AND THE PAPASS
SONG LYRICS TITLED CALIFORNIA DREAMING

By:
Lita Tri Lestari

ABSTRACT

Syntax is the relationship of words in sentence and the relationship

between sentence and sentence structure. The correlation between the word and
another word will form phrase, clause, and sentence. One of song writers, The
Mama and The Papas, wrote the song lyrics which is titled Caliifornia
Dreaming . California Dreaming is a rock song that has been released in album
If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears.
This research is aimed to syntactically analiyze, spesifically on the
Syntactic categories, Phrase Structure Trees and Phrase Structure rules of each
lyrics in The Mamas and The Papass song which is titled California Dreaming.
The type of the research is a qualitative descriptive research. The data were
collected by searching the lyrics, and then conducted a syntactic analysis of the
lyrics itself.
The result of the analysis of Syntactic categories, Phrase Structure Trees
and Phrase Structure rules of each lyrics was that there were two kinds of main
pattern that occured in this song lyrics. The first pattern was S pattern that was
devided into 4 types. Those are SS2 Coord S3 (30%), SS PP (17%), the
pattern of SS2 S3 (17%), and S1Coord S2 S3 (8,3%). Meanwhile the second
partern of was NP which only consis of one type, NPNP PP (25%).

Keyword: Syntax, syntactic analysis, song

 INTRODUCTION

Linguistics is a study of human languge that is required as a basis for

examining a particular language. Linguistics is studied in every languge, including
English. According to The New Oxford Dictionary of English (2003),
linguistics is defined as The scientific study of language and its structure,
including the study of grammar, syntax, and phonetics. Specific branches of
linguistics include sociolinguistics,dialectology, psycholinguistics,
computational linguistics, comparative linguistics, and structural linguistics.
One of the branch of linguistics that spesifically studies about sentence structure
and consturction is syntax. Srijono (2001: 63) stated that syntax may be
roughly defined as the principles of arragement of the constructive (words) into
larger constructions of various kinds. Syntax is the system of rules and
categories that underlines sentence formation in human language.
In studying syntax, various learning methods have been developed. One of the
most popular methods developed at this time is to use the song as the learning media.
Learning method using song has many advantages among which are to be applied
starting from the basic and advanced level of students and can also remind the
students' interest in learning, so that they can enjoy their learning process. Language
learning method with songs has been widely implemented by various educational
institutions and has been shown to improve some aspects of language skills, one of
which is an aspect of their grammar, especially syntax. By listening to the songs
intensively, students can indirectly or directly analyze the sentence structure of the
lyrics contained in the song.
Deperting from the explanation above, the researcher focused the
song analysis on the syntactic categories, phrase structure trees and
phrase structure rules. It is necesary to know the class word (syntactic
category), what this certain word belongs to. Phrase structure trees allow
us to break down a sentence until the very base construction, in this case
is syntactic and lexical categories so that we will find out what class a word
is in a sentence. Later, the researcher expects to find out the
sentence/phrase structure patterns occurred in The Mamas and The
Papass song which is titled California Dreaming to know the trend of
language structure used in the song itself.

Research Questions

According to the introduction that has been explained above, the

reseacher determines the reseach questions into three points as follow:

1. How is the syntactic categories analysis of The Mamas and The Papass
song lyrics titled California Dreaming?
2. How is the phrase structure trees analysis of The Mamas and The
Papass song lyrics titled California Dreaming?
3. How is the phrase sturucture rules snslysis of the The Mamas and The
Papass song lyrics titled California Dreaming?

The Aims of the Reserach

1. To know how the syntactic categories analysis of The Mamas and The
Papass song lyrics titled California Dreaming is.
2. To know how the phrase structure trees analysis of The Mamas and The
Papass song lyrics titled California Dreaming is.
3. To know how the phrase sturucture rules snslysis of the The Mamas
and The Papass song lyrics titled California Dreaming is.
 THEORITICAL FRAMEWORK

Syntax is one of the branches of linguistics that studies about

sentence structure. Syntax derives from Ancient Greek
"arrangement" from syn, "together", and txis, "an ordering",
so syntax can be defined as "the study of the principles and processes by
which sentences are constructed in particular languages". According to
Valin (2001: 1), syntax refers to the branch of grammar dealing with the
ways in which words, with or without appropriate inflection are arranged to
show connections of meaning within the sentence. Based on the
explanation above, we can conclude that syntaxt is a branch of linguistic
that learns about sentence grammar and constrution. Grammar is rules of
a language governing the sounds, words, sentences, and other elements,
as well as their combination and interpretation. Grammar is devided into
two kinds, stuructural grammar that concerns with how elements of a
sentence such as morphemes, phonemes, phrase, clause, and parts of
speech are put together and transfirmational grammar that recognizes the
relationship among the various elements of a sentence and among the
possible sentences of a language and uses processes or rules (some of
which are called transformations) to express these relationships.

Syntactic Analysis
Syntactic analysis is a process to break (a sentence) down into its
component parts of speech with an explanation of the form, function, and
syntactical relationship of each part.
Phrase Structure Rules
Phrase Structure Rules are a way to describe a given language's
syntax and are closely associated with the early stages of
Transformational Grammar. They are used to break down a natural
language sentence into its constituent parts (also known as syntactic
categories) namely phrasal categories and lexical categories (aka
parts of speech). As the name suggests, these rules state that the
structure of a phrase of a specific type will consist of one or more
constituents in a particular order. We can use phrase structure rules to
present the information of the tree diagram in another format, as we saw
when we introduced some new symbols earlier. That is, the information
shown in the tree diagram on the left can be expressed in the phrase
structure rule on the right.

NP
NP Art N

Art N

According to this rule, a noun phrase rewrites as an article followed by

noun.
The first rule in the following set of simple (and necessarily
incomplete) phrase structure rules states that a sentence rewrites as a
noun phrase and a verb phrase. The second rule states that a noun
phrase rewrites as either an article, an optional adjective and a noun or
pronoun or a proper noun.
a. Rules for rewriting noun phrases
We can now characterise and exemplify certain types of NP.
Noun (N): Karen, spoons, justice, swimming
Determiner (DET) + Noun: that spoon, a judge, some
gnomes
Determiner + Adjective (ADJ) + Noun: an old farmer, her
aged instructor, the flying saucer
Determiner + Adjective + Noun + Prepositional Phrase
(PP): the coldest weather of the year, the first woman on
the moon
One way of representing these various NP patterns is by the use
of phrase structure rule (also called rewrite rules) like
the following:
1. NP N (NP consists of N)
2. NP DET N (NP consists of DET + N)
 3. NP DET ADJ N (NP consists of DET + ADJ + N)
4. NP DET ADJ N PP (NP consists of DET + ADJ + N+
PP)
These four rules can be collapsed into a single rule if we place
parantheses around optional elements (that is, around elements
that need not be present). Notice that the only constituent
required each NP phrase-structure rule is N; the other
___
constituents are optional and must be placed in parantheses.
The abbreviated rule looks like this:
5. NP (DET) (ADJ) N (PP)
Because DET, ADJ and PP are each optional, we can rewrite NP
not only as in 1, 2, 3 and 4 above, but also in other ways,
including 6 and 7.
6. NP ADJ N
7. NP DET N PP
b. Prepositional Phrase
The notation PP stands for prepositional phrase, example of
which include in the car, from Ethiopia, in the attic, to his
brother, with the earring and by the judge. Because of every
PP consists of a preposition (PREP) and a noun phrase (NP), the
phrase structure rule for PP is this:
PP PREP NP
c. Infinitival TP (infinitival tense phrase)
Infinitival to is a non-finite tense particle (belonging to the
category T) and if to is the head of the phrase to help you, the
structure formed by merging the infinitival T-particle to with the
verb phrase/VP help you will be TP in below:
TP TP T VP
T VP
V Pro

to help you
d. Rules for rewriting sentences and verb phrases
 To capture the fact that sentences and clauses have two basis
constituent parts, we formulate the following phrase structure
rule:
S NP VP
Every phrase structure rule can generate a tree diagram, and this
phrase stucture rule (rewrite S as NP and VP) would generate the
following tree.

NP VP

Having seen various expansions of NP, we turn now to the

internal structure of VP to explore its expansions and the rewrite
rules necessary to accommodate them. The following expansions
for identifying VPs reveal that the structures on the right are VPs;
the labels under parts of the VPs indicate the categories of
constituents of those structures.
V
VP V NP
V NP PP
Using parantheses to enclose optional elements, we can collapse
these three phrase structure rules in to a single rule, which says
that a VP must have a V and may have an NP or a PP, or both an
NP and a PP.
VP V (NP) (PP)
We have now formulated four phrase structure rules.
S NP VP (PP)
NP {Art (Adj) N, Pro, PN}
VP V (NP) (PP) (Adv)
PP Prep (NP)
These rules represent the fact that every sentence has an NP
and a VP; that every NP has an N; that every VP has a V; and that
every PP has a Prep. According to those rules, other possibilities are
optional.
 Many generalizations about English are contained in those
rules. For example, Noun Phrases always contain a Noun,
Prepositional Phrases a Preposition, and Verb Phrases a Verb. Put
more clearly, X phrases always contain an X, where X stands for
Noun, Preposition, or Verb. The X of an X phrase is called the head
of that phrase. thus the head of a Noun Phrase is a Noun, of a
Prepositional Phrase is preposition, and so on which is not
surprising. Every phrasal category must contain at a minimum its
lexixal category head. It may, of course, contain other elements. A
VP may or may not include an NP or a PP but it must always contain
a Verb.
Complement Phrases
Mary helped George.
Cathy knew that Mary helped George.
Cathy believed that Cathy knew that Mary helped George.
The word that, as used in the sentences above, is called
complementizer (C). The role of that as a complementizer is to
introduce a complement phrase (CP). For example, in the second
sentence (Cathy knew ...), we can identify one CP which contains that
plus Mary helped George. We already know that Mary helped George
is a sentence (S). So we are now in a position to define a CP in the
following way: a complement phrase rewrites as a complementizer and a
sentence, or CP C S.
We can also see from the same sentence that the complement
phrase (CP) comes after a verb (V) IknewI. This means that we are using
the CP as part of a verb phrase (VP), as in Iknew that Mary helped GeorgeI.
So, there must be another rule that says: a verb phrase rewrites as a verb
and complement phrase, or VP V CP.
If we now look at these two new rules in conjunction with an earlier
rule, we can see how recursion is built into the grammar.
S NP VP
VP V CP
CP C S
We begin with S on the left and, as we rewrite symbols, we
eventually have S on the right, allowing us to go back to the beginning and
go through the set of rules again (and again)

S
NP VP

PN V CP
C S
NP VP
PN V CP
C S
NP VP
V NP

John believed that Cathy knew that Mary helped George

FINDING AND DISCUSSION

Lyrics Number of Line

All the leaves are brown and the sky is Line 1
grey
I have been for a walk on a winter day Line 2
I would be safe and warn if I was in LA Line 3
California Dreaming on such a winter day Line 4
I stopped into a church, I passed along the Line 5
way
I got down on my knees and I pretend to Line 6
pray
You know the peacher liked the cold Line 7
California dreaming on such a winter day Line 8
All the leaves are brown and the sky is Line 9
brown
I have been for a walk on a winter day Line 10
If I did not tell her, I could leave today Line 11
California dreaming on such a winter day Line 12

Syntactic Analysis of each lyric

Line 1, line 9 (The Pattern of S1 S2 Coord S3)

S1

S2 Coord S3

NP VP NP VP

AP NP V N Art N Aux
Adj

Art N

All the leaves are brown and The Sky is

grey

Line 2, line 10 (The pattern of S S PP)

S1

S PP

NP VP PP PP
 Aux Aux Prep NP Prep Aux

N Art N
Art NP

I have been for a walk on

a winter

Line 3 (The Pattern of S1S2 Coord S3)

S1

S2 S3

NP VP NP
VP

N Aux Adj N Aux PP

Prep N

I would be safe if I was

in LA

Line 4, line 8, line 12 (The pattern of NP NP PP)

NP

NP PP
 Adj N Prep AP

Adv NP

Prep NP

Adj N

California dreaming on such

a winter day

Line 5 (The pattern of S1S2 S3)

S1

S2 S3

NP VP NP VP

N V PP N VP
PP

Prep NP Prep
NP

Art N Art N
 I stopped into a church I passed
along the way

Line 6 (The Pattern of S1S2 Coord S3)

S1

S2 S3

NP VP Coord NP
VP

N VP PP N V TP

V Adv Prep NP T
V

Adj Noun

I got down on my knees and I

Pretend to Pray

Line 7 (The pattern of S1 S2 S3)

S1

S2 S3

NP VP NP VP
 N V Art N V NP

Art
N

You know the peacher liked

the cold

Line 11 (The pattern of S1Coord S2 S3)

S1

Coord S2 S3

NP VP NP VP

N Aux VP N Aux NP

V N VP
Adv

If I would be did not tell her I could

leave today

Discussion
1. The pattern of S
In ordinary sentences, the S is always subdivided into NP VP
(Fromkin, 1983). However, while the researcher analyzing the data, when
she look at other phrase structure trees of English, she saw certain
patterns emerging. As in the pattern of S itself, the researcher found 4
types of pattern. Among these 4 types of pattern, the researcher found
that the most frequent phrase structure pattern occurred on line 1, line 3,
line 6, and line 9 was the pattern of S1 S2 Coord S3 (30%); The other
stutucture occured on line 4, line 8, line 12 was the pattern of NPNP PP
(25%); The pattern of SS PP (17%) occured in line 2 and line 10; The
pattern S1S2 S3 (17%) occured in line 5 and line 7; And the lowest
frequency occured in line 11 with pattern S1Coord S2 S3 (8,3%).
2. The pattern of NP
The only constituent required in each NP phrase-structure rule is N;
the other constituents --- DET, ADJ and PP --- are optional and must be
placed in parentheses (Edward, 2000). Because DET, ADJ and PP are each
optional, we can rewrite NP in many variation of patterns as the researcher
found in lyrics. This kind of pattern occured in 1 types based on the
researcher analysis that the pattern of NPNP PP (25%) occured in line
11.

CONCLUSION

Based on the syntactical analysis of song lyrics of The Mamas

and The Papas song which is titled California Dreamin that has been
explained before, the researcher make the conclusion of the research
become the points.

1. There were two kinds of main pattern consisting in song lyrics of The
Mama and The Papas song which is titled California Dreaming,
those pattern are S and pattern of NP.
2. The pattern of S consists of 4 types, the higest frequency of pattern
occurance was S1S2 Coord S3 with percentage 30%, and the
lowest frequency of pattern occurance was S1Coord S2 S3 with
percentage (8,7%).
3. Meanwhile, the pattern of NP consists of only 1 typpe, that was
NPNP PP with percentage (25%).
 BILIOGRAPHY

Srijono. (2001). An Introductory Course of Linguistic. Surakarta: Muhammadiyah

University Press
Valin, Robert D. Van. (2001). An Introduction to Syntax. Cambridge University
Press.
Suci, Isnia Wulan. (2014). Syntactic Analysis on the Headlines in New York
Times. Tulung Agung: Islamic State Institute