Word-Formations and Semantic Relations of Compound Words Found in <em>National Geographic</em> Magazines

Abstract

This study aims to identify and classify the compound words, and their semantic relations and to interpret the meanings of the newly coined compound words found in National Geographic magazines January to June 2019 edition. This study uses qualitative methods to analyze the data. This research focused on the classification of compound words according to Delahunty & Garvey (2010): compound nouns (CN), compound verbs (CV), compound adjectives (CAdj), compound adverbs (CAv), and neoclassical compound (NCC). The results of the study show that there are 241 data of compound words. Compound nouns become the most dominant types (144), followed by neoclassical compounds (45), compound adjectives (37), compound verbs (12), and the least frequent is compound adverb (3). For the analysis of semantic relations, the study shows that endocentric compounds become the most dominant semantic relations with 170 data, meanwhile 71 data are exocentric compounds. The researcher found at least six newly coined and theme-related compounds that whose meanings have not been found in the referenced dictionaries.