COMPOUNDING OF BASEMAH LANGUAGE: An Effort to Understand the Uniqueness of Local Languages

Abstract

The objectives of this research are to describe the compound and identify its kinds in Basemah language. Compound is words formed by combining roots, and the much smaller category of phrasal words, that is items that have internal structure of phrases but function syntactically as words. Compounds cannot be connected by conjunction (McCharty, 2002). This research employed a qualitative research design, as suggested by Sugiyono that qualitative is an artistic method because the process of the research is about art and it is called interpretive method because the result of data research is about interpretation of data which are found in the field (2013:7-8). Therefore, this study uses a descriptive method in describing the finding of the data. The method of this research is descriptive qualitative method. The result of this research shows that compounding in Basemah language is distinguished based on its structures: noun-adjective, noun-noun, noun-verb and compound with certain words that relate to Endocentric compound, exocentric compound and copulative compound.