The Hierarchical Structure of words found in Thesis Abstract of English Language and Letters Departement in Maulana Malik Ibrahim State Islamic University of Malang

ABSTRACT

It was not easy to know the meaning of a word and most people do not know the stem of the word. Hierarchical structure is important to be studied because it is the way to know that a word is not built by itself but it has some processes to build a new word; it is attached step by step. This hierarchical is defined as the way to know that the stem of a word changes after it is added by some affixes.

In this research, the research wants to analyze how the hierarchical structure of words in English Language and Letters Department student’s thesis abstract in Maulana Malik Ibrahim Islamic University of Malang. This research uses descriptive qualitative research because the data of this research consist of words which have more than two morphemes and words which have ambiguous meaning. The data are taken from words in ten students’ thesis abstract of Student English and Letters Department who have finished their thesis in May 2013. The researcher analyzed the words which are begun by some prefixes, there are re-, dis-, un-, il-, in-, im-, and en-. In analyzing the data, the researcher used tree diagram to make the researcher easier in analyzing the data. In this research, the researcher used theory of word formation by Ingo Plag and theory of word and their structure based on Andrew Carstairs and McCarty.

Based on the finding data the researcher found there are some words which change the part of speech after added by some affixes, even prefix or suffix. The result also found that by hierarchal structure we can identify from the stem to the whole word and sometimes the stem of a word can have different meaning after it is added by affixes. In creating a new word we must pay attention to the function of affixes, grammatical function and also the part of speech.

The researcher gives suggestions to students, lecturers and further researchers of English Language and Letters Department. To the students, they are suggested to learn more about word and to identify word its meaning and way its change. To the lecturers, they are suggested to know the new phenomena about why a word changes and to the future researchers, they are suggested to continue investigating on morphological area, especially investigating on the hierarch ical structure of words.