Comparative study of compound words in English and Indonesian Fransiska Napitupulu

come-as-you-are is; is a compound word that function as an adjective modyfying party: 
this is a come as you are party. in this sentence, come and are are verbs, as is a 
preposition and you is a pronoun.
Compound words include, compound nouns: bride-to-be, baby-sitter, back-seat 
driver, yellow pages; compound adjectives: mouth-watering, labour-saving, out-of-date, 
life-and death; compound verbs: chain-smoke, stir-fry, lip-read, baby-sit, window-shop. 
Compound words may be used to supply information in a short or concise way. It occur 
frequently in newspaper headlines and in technical. The way to interpret most long 
compound words is to start with the last word and work backwards. However, it should 
be noted that there are compound words with fixed meaning that cannot be guessed from 
the meaning of their components, not all black birds are blackbirds, and a man-of-war is 
not a human being but a warship. 

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Some compound words are by convention written as one word; typewriter, 
overtake, newspaper, etc. Some are hyphenated; son-in-law, self-taught, a-take-it-or-
leave-it attitude. Some are writtenas separate words; a brick floor, a student hostel. 
Sometimes, there are differences in the way the same compound words are written, such 
as: textbook maybe written as text book, textbook and, text-book by different writers. We 
might also know that some compound nouns have components that are always spelt with 
an –s or –es, while the a compound adjective normally does not have an –s or –es ending 
even though it may be formed from a clause or phrase with a plural phrase. Such as, a 
stamp that costs twenty cents, which is mean that a twenty cent stamp (not twenty cents). 
From the above explanation, the writer might conclude that compound words is 
used together to form one word and used as a group of separate words that refer to one 
thing or idea.
Kam Chuan Aik suggets us that English form compounds very freely, many are 
in everyday use and many are created on the fly in the conversation. Let us think of 
carefully the words, such as: a heat of sources, the supply of gas, post offices, my mother-
in-law’s-book, the population of the world etc. Some of these look similar to each other, 
on the face of it. a heat of sources and the population of the world appear to be both 
(noun + of + noun). But a heat of sources is an adjective and the populationof the world 
is a noun being related to the world population, in their most typical uses. My mother-in-
law’s book is the compound nouns formed by adding ‘s. Where as the supply of gas is 
relate to the gas supply, post offices being related to a post office. 
Jakson (2000:44) states that “compounding is a combination of two or more 
words (free mophemes) and a simple juxtaposition of two words compounding might be 
form by noun and noun, verb and noun, adjective and noun, preposition and noun, and all 
combinations of world class”. For example, white house, since the same items can be put 
together in the same order to produce white house ‘ a house that white’ or which is built 
from adjective and noun. Compounds are also found among adjectives ( newborn, red-
hot, banana-flavoured), verbs (download, stagemanage), prepositions / adverbs (inside, 
inspite of). 
In this case, vocabulary also is one of the systems of compound words, in which 
the value of one elements is determined by the values of related elements in the system. A 
parts of system, vocabulary is intimately interrelated with grammar. In fact, it is possible 
to devide tha lexical system of most language into grammatical words, such as 
preposition, articles, adverbs, etc. In most language teaching approaches, vocabulary has 
play second fiddle to grammar.