A STUDY OF ARGUMENT STRUCTURE DEPICTED IN LABYRINTH BY

TAYLOR SWIFT

by
Gracia Chronika Partogi Butar Butar
Student Number: 204214187
 CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

There are many kinds of music such as rock, RnB, jazz, pop, and K-pop. All those kinds of

music had spread everywhere, in our country. Music could express our feeling and emotion. Music

was a universal language, so it could touch our hearts Then we enjoyed it and it was able to touch

any aspect of human life. Nowadays, music had a wider connotation since it still had a rule when it

was demonstrated; it was beautiful with the existence of the element of rhyme, tone, and harmony.

Through its different lyrics, music could arise feelings of love, sadness, hope, and happiness.

Labyrinth is one of the popular song in 2022 that written by Taylor Swift. This song was very

popular because of the meaning of the song about the stage that someone of being in love. This

song has a meaning that sometimes people could feel when they really falling in love with someone

and has several stages from grieve to happy end love.

According to Miller (2002), syntax has to do with “how words are put together to build the

phrases, and with how clauses are put together to build sentences.”. Studying syntax can also enable

language learners to compose complex sentences (Miller, 2002, p. 12)

The reason why the researcher selected Taylor Swift’s song lyrics as the object of this

research is to examine the pattern of the sentence that contains argument structures in the song

lyrics, the researcher also uses a table to examine the song lyrics.

B. Problem Formulation

1. What kind of argument structures are found in Taylor Swift’s song Labyrinth?

2. What are the common argument structures that are found in the song Labyrinth by Taylor

Swift?

C. Objectives of the Study

1. To see what kind of argument structures are found in Taylor Swift’s song Labyrinth.
2. To see the most common argument structures that are found in the song Labyrinth by Taylor

Swift.
 CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

A. Review of Related Theories

The amount of noun phrases (NPs) and prepositional phrases (PPs) or clauses (CPs) they

require is another approach to categorizing verbs. The argument structure is the name given to this

second type of division. We need to define a few words before we can talk about argument

structure. It's likely that the researcher learned in grammar class that "every sentence contains a

subject and a predicate." According to the concepts you learned in grammar class, the subject is

typically the first noun phrase (that is, the first noun and everything that goes with it), and the

predicate is the rest of the sentence. (Carnie, 2013, p.58) This refers to how many arguments a

specific predicate needs. Valency is another term for argument structure. Consider predicates that

only accept one argument (i.e., they have a valency of 1). These predicates include actions such as a

nod, show up, sit, and run. How arguments follow the verb is referred to as the transitivity property.

Predicates with such a valency of 1 are referred to as being intransitive because there are no

arguments after the verb (just one argument comes before the verb). Predicates with a valency of 2

require two mandatory arguments; examples are hit, love, see, kiss, adore, etc. Because they have a

single argument following the verb, these predicates are said to as transitive.
 CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

A. Object of the Study

The object of this study is the Labyrinth song by Taylor Swift. The song was popularized by

American singer, Taylor Swift. This hit song was released by Taylor on October 21, 2002.

'Midnight Rain' is one of the songs from Taylor Swift's tenth studio album titled 'Midnight Rain'.

This song was produced by Jack Antonoff and Taylor Swift. In "Labyrinth," After a terrible event,

Taylor finds herself falling in love with someone very quickly. She is astonished at how, after first

thinking that she would never be able to overcome her suffering, she finds comfort in a new person.

In the first pre-chorus, Taylor compares her dread of falling in love too quickly to her dislike of

elevators, which she attributes to their speedy ascent. Her emotional ups and downs, from "going

down" to "coming right around," are both thrilling and terrifying.

Labyrinth by Taylor Swift

It only hurts this much right now 1st line

Was what I was thinking the whole time
Breathe in, breathe through
Breathe deep, breathe out
I'll be getting over you my whole life 5th line
You know how scared I am of elevators
Never trust it if it rises fast
It can't last

Uh oh, I'm falling in love

Oh no, I'm falling in love again 10th line
Oh, I'm falling in love
I thought the plane was going down
How'd you turn it right around

It only feels this raw right now

Lost in the labyrinth of my mind 15th line
Break up, break free, break through, break down
You would break your back to make me break a smile
You know how much I hate that everybody just expects me to bounce back
Just like that

Uh oh, I'm falling in love

Oh no, I'm falling in love again 20th line
Oh, I'm falling in love
I thought the plane was going down
How'd you turn it right around

Uh oh, I'm falling in love

Oh no, I'm falling in love again 25th line
Oh, I'm falling in love
I thought the plane was going down
How'd you turn it right around

Uh oh, I'm falling in love

Oh no, I'm falling in love again 30th line
Oh, I'm falling in love
I thought the plane was going down
How'd you turn it right around

Uh oh, I'm falling in love

Oh no, I'm falling in love again 35th line
Oh, I'm falling in love
I thought the plane was going down
How'd you turn it right around

NO VERB NO VERB

1 Hurts 13 Thought

2 Was 14 Going

3 Thinking 15 Turn

4 Breath 16 Feels

5 Will 17 Lost

6 Getting 18 Would

7 Know 19 Hate

8 Am 20 Expects

9 Trust 21 Bounce

10 Rises 22 Break

11 Last 23 Know

12 Falling

B. Method of the Study

 In this study, the researcher uses a syntactic approach to determine which verb phrase

structure is contained in the song. Data that are used for this research are the verbs and phrases from

the song lyrics. There are 23 pieces of data that will be analyzed with a tree diagram so that the

types of verb phrase structure can be found inside the lyrics.

CHAPTER IV

ANALYSIS

1. Intransitive [NP_]
2. Transitive Type 1 [NP_ NP]
3. Transitive Type 2 [NP_ {NP/CP}}
4. Ditransitive type 1 [NP_ NP/NP]
5. Ditransitive type 2 [NP_ NP/PP]
6. Ditransitive type 3 [NP_ NP{NP/PP}]
7. Ditransitive type 4 [NP_ NP{NP/PP/CP}]

A. The Analysis of Argument Structure Using Table

NO VERB Subcategory

1 Hurts V [NP_], V [NP_ NP]

2 Was V [NP_ NP], V [NP_ NP/PP]

3 Thinking V [NP_], V [NP_ NP/NP]

4 Breath V [NP_]

5 Will V [NP_]

6 Getting V [NP_ NP], V [NP_ NP{NP/PP}]

7 Know V [NP_ NP]

8 Am V [NP_ {NP/CP}]

9 Trust V [NP_NP]

10 Rises V [NP_ NP], V [NP_ NP{NP/PP}]

11 Last V [NP_ NP]

12 Falling V [NP_], V [NP_ NP]

13 Thought V [NP_ NP]

14 Going V [NP_ NP/PP], V [NP_ NP{NP/PP}]

15 Turn V [NP_ NP/PP], V [NP_ NP{NP/PP}]

16 Feels V [NP_ NP/NP]

17 Lost V [NP_ NP/NP], V [NP_ NP{NP/PP}]

18 Would V [NP_ NP/NP]

19 Hate V [NP_ NP]

20 Expects V [NP_ NP]

21 Bounce V [NP_]

22 Break V [NP_ NP]

23 Know V [NP_], V [NP_ NP]

B. The percentage of Argument Structure in Labyrinth song lyrics

To find out the number of the use of argument structures in the lyrics song Labyrinth, the
researchers analyzed each sentence and write the verb using a table. The results obtained 23
verb phrases in the song lyrics. From the data, Intransitive occur 7 times, Transitive Type 1
occurs 13 times and is the higher among other structure, Transitive Type 2 occur 1 time,
Ditransitive Type 1 occurs 4 times, Ditransitive Type 2 occur 3 times, Ditransitive Type 3 occur
5 times, and the last one is Ditransitive Type 4 is none.

14

12

10

0
Intransitive Transitive Transitive Ditransitive Ditransitive Ditransitive Ditransitive
Type 1 Type 2 type 1 type 2 type 3 type 4
 CHAPTER V

No SubCategory Verb

1 Intransitive Hurts, Thinking, Bounce, Know,

Falling, Will, Breath

2 Transitive Type 1

3 Transitive Type 2 Am

4 Ditransitive Type 1 Thinking, Turn, Feels, Lost

5 Ditransitive Type 2 Getting, Rises, Going

6 Ditransitive Type 3

7 Ditransitive Type 4 -

In this research, the song Labyrinth uses 6 different argument structures and the researchers

analyze 23 data of verb phrases that are put in the table above, it’s because categorized phrases from

the sentence in the song lyrics could be categorized as the argument structure by using several

types. In conclusion, in the song lyrics of Labyrinth by Taylor Swift, the verb phrases use many

Transitive Type 1 a number of 13 times. We can know this conclusion is because the verb could be

used between the NP (Noun Phrases) in a sentence.

References:

Carnie, A. (2000). Syntax. America: Blackwell Publishers.

Carnie, A. (2013). Syntax A Generative Introduction (3rd ed.) Blackwell Publishing, Ltd.

Airasian, P and L. R. Gay. 2000. Educational Research: Competencies for Analysis

and Application Sixth Edition. New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc.

Taylor Swift – labyrinth. Genius. (n.d.). Retrieved December 25, 2022, from
https://genius.com/Taylor-swift-labyrinth-lyrics