‘AGENT’ AND ‘INSTRUMENT’ SYNCRETISM IN RUSSIAN WORD FORMATION: SOME TYPOLOGICAL NOTES

The article analyzes word-formation types with an obvious combination of the mean ings of ‘agent’ (‘actor’) and ‘instrument’ (syncretic types) in the word-formation system of the Russian language, as well as the ‘actor’ names without such a combination (non syncretic types). It is shown that the ‘actor’ word-formation types, which do not have the ‘instrument’ meaning, have special features. In the system of Russian nominal word-for mation, they are pushed to the periphery: firstly, they are mainly unproductive or marginal; secondly, their predominant part constitutes a grammatically isolated group with the feature of ‘common gender’, thirdly, if individual derivatives with a specifi c meaning are recorded for them, then, as a rule, they do not have the ‘instrument’ meaning, but possess the general ‘object’ meaning. The presence of additional systemic names with ‘animal’, ‘plant’ and ‘thing’ meanings in ‘actor’ names is considered as a typological characteristic, in particular, distinguishing the Russian language from the neighboring Altaic languages, and bringing it closest to the Indo-European Baltic languages. The wide spectrum of specifi c meanings of Russian ‘actor’ names signifi es the dominance of the principle of maximum abstraction: any concrete-objective entities can receive a single marking in the system, regardless of the feature of ‘animateness’ or ‘inanimateness’.