The Pattern of Information Structure in Junior High School Students in Informal and Formal Conversations

Since language is used as a communication tool, information structure is essential in a language system and in the communication process. This research was aimed to find out the pattern of information structure in the conversations of junior high school students. The present research focused on informal and conversations be-tween student-student and teacher-student or student-teacher conversations. The research portrayed thirty-six informal and formal conversations. This was qualitative research, and the researcher focused on Topic and Focus of each conversation, since topic and focus are important constructions in giving the information or constructing the sentence. The findings of this study portrayed that both speakers (teacher or students) tended to eliminate the subject, or the TOPIC (47 %), while only 33 % of eliminating the predicate or the FOCUS, and the rest is only 20% showed that there was no any elimination in the conversations. Meanwhile, in the informal conversation, both of speakers (teacher


I. Introduction
Language is an important tool in communication.Language can develop itself if there is contact with other languages.Language is unique.It means that each language has its own characteristics such as differences in sound, phoneme, word formation system, or in sentence formation system.The study of language is called linguistics.
One example of developments in linguistics is Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG).It existed in late 1970 and was introduced by (Kaplan & Bresnan, 1995).(Dalrymple, 2001) defined this approach about linguistic structure and re- Since language is used as a communication tool, information structure is essential in a language system and in the communication process.This research was aimed to find out the pattern of information structure in the conversations of junior high school students.The present research focused on informal and conversations between student-student and teacher-student or student-teacher conversations.The research portrayed thirty-six informal and formal conversations.This was qualitative research, and the researcher focused on Topic and Focus of each conversation, since topic and focus are important constructions in giving the information or constructing the sentence.The findings of this study portrayed that both speakers (teacher or students) tended to eliminate the subject, or the TOPIC (47 %), while only 33 % of eliminating the predicate or the FOCUS, and the rest is only 20% showed that there was no any elimination in the conversations.Meanwhile, in the informal conversation, both of speakers (teacher or students) tended to eliminate the subject, or the TOPIC (60%), while only 27% of eliminating the predicate or the FOCUS, and the rest is only 13% showed that there was no any elimination in the conversations.
Previous research has reported that information structure encompasses focus and topic constructions.The function is to describe every sentence and to find out typology (Arka, 2003;Dalrymple, 1993Dalrymple, , 2001;;Kaplan & Bresnan, 1995).To analyze a discourse or conversation, the researcher used information structure.(Birner & Ward, 2006) stated that information structure concerns how information in discourse is packaged and how a syntactic structure is used in a particular context while another structure is avoided.As the research questions, the researcher tried to formulate the research question:

RQ1. What is the pattern of information structure in Junior High School Students (JHS) in an informal and formal conversation?
The aim of this research was to investigate the pattern of information structure that had been uttered by Junior High School (JHS) students, especially in their informal and formal conversation.

II. Literature Review
Linguistics is a study about language.(Andre, 1960) said that its studies language form, language meaning, and language in context.Language itself is a means of communication tool that we use to interact and communicate with others.Many approaches included in the schools of linguistics such as structuralism, Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), Transformational Grammar, Systemic Functional Grammar (SFL), Prague Schools, etc.
One of the schools of linguistics is Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG).It existed in late 1970 and was introduced by (Kaplan & Bresnan, 1995).This approach studied linguistic structure and the relations as defined by (Dalrymple, 2001).In Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), there are constituent structure and functional structure.Both belong to the classic theory of Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG).The function is to describe every sentence in the world and to find out typology (Arka, 2003;Dalrymple, 1993Dalrymple, , 2001;;Kaplan & Bresnan, 1995).
Information structure has 'TOPIC' or abbreviated as 'TOP', which means "A topic is what a given clause or sentence is about ….", as defined by (Obata, 2003).
Further, (Verschueren et al., 1995) said that "topics must be referential; they refer to entities, events, states of the affair, and so on."Another part in information structure instead of TOPIC is 'FOCUS' or commonly known as 'FOC'.Focus gave new information that is assumed to be presupposed and important (Schneider, 2009).Further, she added that people should distinguish and differentiate between topic and focus; they are totally different.Focus gave new information meanwhile the topic is presupposed.
The advantages of using this theory instead of as a tool to analyze verbal sentences in Indonesia are Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) is more detailed and has a complete explanation.(Liamkina & Ryshina-Pankova, 2012) stated that using this approach can be a rich resource in teaching grammar in making contextualized meaning in a culture-and language specific way.Meanwhile, the structuralism approach only emphasized segmentation and phonemics and excluded meaning as cited by (Widdowson, 2007) based on Firth's 1957explanation in his journal.(Puspitasari, 2019) agreed that the structural approach has an advantage in creating and designing a textbook because this approach gave a wide description.Further, she added that this approach could be an alternative in principle learning in language conservative.The researcher concluded some previous studies that used Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) in their research.The first study was done by (Jufrizal et al., 2009), who did a typology analysis of the Minangkabaunese language clause.They analyzed the information structure and got three clauses such as active clause, passive clause, and topicalization clause.These three clauses were mostly uttered by Minangkabaunese.
Furthermore, (Cholisi, 2013) agreed that Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) Theory could be a tool to analyze verbal sentences in Indonesian.(Cholisi, 2013) added that the Indonesian verb structure always related to adjunct and oblique objects.Then, (Kosmas, 2015) used this Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) Theory, especially in constituent structure and functional structure, to analyze the passive construction in the Manggarai language.And as a result, (Kosmas, 2015) found that the Manggarai language is passive syntactic construction because this language does not have a phonological marker.(Romadhan, 2019) also did X-Comp analysis in the Indonesian language using Lexical Functional Grammar, and there was destruction of arguments in the embedded verbs in X-Comp.In this research, the researcher tried to analyze and find out the pattern of information structure in Junior High School (JHS) both in informal and formal conversation.

III. Method
This research employed a descriptive qualitative approach.(Fraenkel et al., 1993) stated that qualitative research is an approach that investigates the quality of relationships, activities, situations, or materials.(Fraenkel et al., 1993) added that the descriptive method is a method used to explain, analyze, and classify something by doing surveys, questionnaires, observation, and text.
For the research design, the researcher used the grounded theory.(Bryant & Charmaz, 2007) explained that the grounded theory strategies enable researchers write memos or notes, record, identify, and sort or classify the data based on the observation.
Participants involved in this study were 12 junior high school students.The focus of this research is the informal and formal conversations enacted between student and student, or student and teacher, or teacher-student while they were having a class.To avoid subjectivity, the researcher's paradox in this research was ensured by the teacher's and students' natural conversations.
The researcher obtained thirty-six conversations that would be used to find out the pattern of the information structure in these conversations.Then, after collecting the data, the researcher analyzed the information structure based on its TOPIC or FOCUS then the researcher concluded the pattern of the conversations into a text.Text means part of communication, which forms a meaningful context (Marmorstein, 2018).He added that the text contains paragraphs, complex sentences, and simple clauses.Further, Halliday and Hasan defined as cited in (Marmorstein, 2018) book.They mentioned that text is not just a sentence cluster but a unit of language in use, a unified whole.

IV. Results and Discussion
Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) has some grained components such as background, given, focus and topic within the i-structure projection (Butt & King, 2014).This information structure is different between the constituent structure since its morphological markings.And in this research, the researcher tried to observe one school of Junior High School in Semarang.The researcher intended to find out the information structure in informal conversation (student and student) and informal conversation (student and teacher/ and student).
The researcher got eighteen conversations for each.The conversations were written in Indonesian because it should be pure and natural, using the native language.The Mother tongue itself means the first language that the child acquired (Dardjowidjojo, 2003).(Kurniati, 2015) found that using the mother tongue in teaching can help the students develop and understand the lesson.
Another research was conducted by (Suhardin et al., 2018).They got that there is a relationship between students' language acquisition and students' motivation in learning.It showed that the students' motivation itself could construct a good atmosphere in learning.Further, (Li, 2009) stated that learning motivation is a strong internal drive for language learning.Look at the first example in this informal conversation below: The information structure (Str-i) found by Halliday, and this structure means that the conversation above is as follows an oral sentence that depends on a number of constituents in syntax and is related to the emphasis of the phrase on the sentence.(Widayati, 2005) summarizes that in the structure of this information can put a predicate or object or information at the beginning of a sentence, or another name is an inversion sentence as in the following example: The terms TOP, which means TOPIC and FOK, which means FOCUS is one of the naming terms used in the structure of information (Str-i) and included in the Prague view (Widayati, 2005).The topic itself is information that has been given (given information), while Focus is the new information that has been added (new information).Characteristics are the existence of a subject, the predicate of all sentences analyzed.If we look at the example above, the first FOK (Focus) is found in the word 'what is it' then reinforced or emphasized by the next sentence, which is 'get' 'bad score'.This gives new information in accordance with the previous sentence.And in a.2 TOP (Topic) experienced a lapse.
Meanwhile, the example of a formal conversation between student and teacher is written below: The example above has the same pattern as the previous conversation.The second speaker loved eliminating the subject and using the predicate directly even though the subject is eliminated.The important elements of the sentence are subject and predicate.And the information structure is grammatically on the sentences.If the sentence does not have a subject, at least the hearer will still understand the topic or the information of the sentence and vice versa, if the predicate is not existed but the subject still exists, the hearer still could understand the context or topic of the sentence.
The researcher observed that there is a sentence which is not having elimination, both subject, and predicate elimination.The researcher illustrated and explained below: Student: Latar itu apa bu? (What is setting Ma'am?) Teacher: Latar dibagi dua, tempat dan waktu.(Setting is divided into two parts, place and time.) In this case, the researcher argued that there is no elimination of neither subject elimination nor predicate elimination.Both speakers could utter full information.(Lambrecht, 1996) explained that information structure is the grammatical component of the sentence in which the proposition as a conceptual embodiment of circumstances paired with lexicogrammatically structures in relation to the mental state of the talkative use and interpret these structures as units of information in the context of a particular discourse.
As a comparison, (Butt & King, 2014) also did an investigation on the question and information structure in Urdu/Hindi.She focused on the Wh-question and polar question.But, in this research, the questions that had been used mostly in the ungrammatical pattern.The researcher would like to illustrate some example in this Table 1.Based on the data, the researcher may conclude that informal conversation, both of speakers (teacher or students) tended to eliminate the subject, or the Topic (47 %), while only 33 % of eliminating the predicate or the Focus, and the rest is only 20% showed that there was not any elimination in the conversations.Then, the researcher would give some examples of utterance that uttered in informal conversation shows in Table 2: ( There is no rain over a year.)

Subject elimination.
The speaker eliminated the FOCUS, the FOCUS or the subject in here is the 'lake' or 'danau'.
Based on the data, the researcher may conclude that in informal conversation, both of speakers (teacher or students) tended to eliminate the subject, or the Topic (60 %), while only 27 % of eliminating the predicate or the Focus, and the rest is only 13 % showed that there was not any elimination in the conversations.
Thus, based on the result, the researcher may conclude that the speakers in formal or informal conversations loved to eliminate the FOCUS or the Subject.The researcher argued maybe to make it more efficient and simpler in uttering the sentences if the hearer could understand the context by the first speaker.Even though there were some example that had predicate elimination no extension conversation between them was seen.

V. Conclusion
The results of this research show that the structure of information is important in language systems and communication processes.This is because we obtain information without language with all its completeness, information will be difficult or impossible for humans to obtain.Therefore, the following conclusions are obtained: a) Informal conversations, both speakers (teachers or students) tend to eliminate subjects or TOPIC (47%), while only 33% eliminate predicate or FOCUS, and the remaining 20% indicates that there is no elimination in conversation; b) In informal conversations, both speakers (teacher or student) tended to omit subjects, or TOPIC (60%), while only Student A: Ada apa Nora? (What is wrong Nora?) Student B: Dapat nilai buruk.(Got bad score.) Student: Apa yang harus saya lakukan bu?(What should I do, Ma'am?)    Teacher: Baca dahulu.(Readfirst.)

Table 1 .
Investigation on the question and information structure in Urdu/Hindi Aprilia Rosmarie et.al (The Pattern of Information Structure in Junior High School Students)

Table 2 .
Researcher would give some ex¬amples of utterance that uttered in informal conversation