Comparative study of compound words in English and Indonesian Fransiska Napitupulu

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Comparative study of compound words in English and Indonesian
Fransiska Napitupulu 
[e-mail]
 
Abstract 
Compound words cause some difficulty in post-coordinate indexing systems: if too many 
are fractured, or the wrong categories are selected for fracturing, noise will be produced at 
unacceptable levels on retrieval. Various prior suggestions for handling compound terms are 
examined which include those for precoordinated or rotated, indexes.The syntactic origins are also 
explored and it is found that many compound words hinge on a prepositional relationship between 
the components, and that this relationship can be applied to decision making. Other compound 
words are in effect abbreviated statements from longer phrases, while some are influenced by the 
presence of a verb-like form. The rules have some bearing on the application of roles especially if 
these are employed on a pre-coordinate basis. 
Keywords : Compound words, Parts of Compound Words in English, Parts of Compound Words 
in Indonesian
 
1.Background of the Study 
This language is being used as a tool of formal or business communication from 
country to country. By using a language as a means of communication either in spoken or 
written form, it allows people to talk one to another and write their thoughts or ideas as 
clearly as possible. Therefore, if a language does not exist, no one is able to express his or 
her thoughts or ideas to one another, though the application of a body language is very 
essential to give more meaning to the spoken language. In other words, language is very 
closely related with a man’s feelings and activities.
Grammar is one of the language components is very important to support the 
mastery of the four language skills. Grammar as a description of the stucture of a 
language and the way to construct words and phrases are combine to produce sentences in 
the language in order to avoid misunderstanding. Bloomfield (1933/5:178) state that word 
is a minimal free form, hence, a word is viewed as a form which can occur in isolation 
and have meaning but which cannot be analyzed into elements which can occur alone 
and also have meaning. Based on the explanation above, the writer is interesting to 
analysis the different of English language and Bahasa Indonesia in term of word 
compound. 
Based on the problems identified previously, this study focuses to analyze the 
constrastive between English and Bahasa Indonesia in compound words and find out the 
comparison of them. The writer will take the data from English and Bahasa Indonesia 
magazines as her object of research and then the writer will analyze the language and the 
pattern of using the word based on two theory, according to theory of English compound 
words, Jackson (2002:80) gave a good explanation, “compounds may be distinguished 

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from phrase on phonology, syntactic, and semantic grounds” and theory of Indonesia 
compound words, Chaer (2003:163), “penggabungan kata didalam Bahasa Inggris dan 
didalam Bahasa Indonesia tidak jauh berbeda. Hanya saja dibedakan oleh proses 
pembentukan kata”. 
The objectives of this study are described as to investigate the similarities of 
compounds words in English and Bahasa Indonesia., to investigate the differences of 
compound words in English and Bahasa Indonesia 
After doing this research, there are some significances found as following: 
this study is useful for the writer to improve the quality in learning compound words., so 
that they can identify compound word in English text., this study is useful for those 
who will make the same research.