The Systems of Tenses, Aspects, and Modalities in the Short Story The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry

Annisa, Fauziah (2024) The Systems of Tenses, Aspects, and Modalities in the Short Story The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry. S1 thesis, Universitas Andalas.

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Abstract

This thesis analyses the systems of tense, aspect, and modality along with the functions in the short story entitled The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry. Data collection was conducted through a close reading and textual analysis of the short story, focusing on instances of tense, aspect, and modality. The collected data were analyzed using the theory proposed by Lynn M. Berk (1999). From 233 data, two types of tense were found, namely past tense and present tense. The most dominant tense type that appears is the past tense. Furthermore, two aspects were also found, namely the progressive aspect and the perfect aspect. After carrying out the analysis, the most dominant type of aspect emerged, namely the perfect aspect. The author also found modals in the short story, namely epistemic modals and deontic modals. After carrying out the analysis, the type of modals that often appear in these essays is epistemic modals. The author also found the typical functions of tense, aspect, and modal in the short story. In the past tense, the typical function is to communicate past time, while in the present tense, the most typical function is commentary. In the progressive aspect, the most typical function found is preparations are still ongoing, and in the perfect aspect the typical function found is past events with current relevance. Meanwhile, in epistemic modal, a distinctive function is found, namely prediction, and in deontic modal, the functions of volition, strong obligation, and permission are found, each of which amounts to one data. Keywords: tense, aspect, modality, short story

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