Which statement about structural analysis for compound words is true?

Which statement about structural analysis for compound words is true?

• A. It uses context clues to infer meaning rather than analyzing parts.
• B. It ignores prefixes and suffixes when decoding words.
• C. It involves breaking down the word into its component parts to understand meaning.
• D. It relies solely on recognizing the word as a whole without analysis.

Answer: (C)

Structural analysis asks you to look at the parts of a word to understand its meaning. With compound words, you can usually split it into two smaller words that you know. For example, raincoat combines rain and coat, so you can infer a coat meant for rain. Sunflower comes from sun and flower, so it’s a kind of flower related to the sun. By thinking about what each part means, you understand the whole word better. That’s why this statement is the best: it describes breaking the word into its parts to understand its meaning. The other ideas rely on guessing from the surrounding sentence, ignoring the word’s parts, or just recognizing the word without analyzing its parts, which isn’t how structural analysis works.

Structural analysis asks you to look at the parts of a word to understand its meaning. With compound words, you can usually split it into two smaller words that you know. For example, raincoat combines rain and coat, so you can infer a coat meant for rain. Sunflower comes from sun and flower, so it’s a kind of flower related to the sun. By thinking about what each part means, you understand the whole word better.

That’s why this statement is the best: it describes breaking the word into its parts to understand its meaning. The other ideas rely on guessing from the surrounding sentence, ignoring the word’s parts, or just recognizing the word without analyzing its parts, which isn’t how structural analysis works.