THE RUSSIAN WORD COMPOSITION: BETWEEN LEXIS AND GRAMMAR

 The paper aims to investigate modes of Russian word composition. In traditional grammars, word composition is usually not allocated to a separate section and the compound words themselves are classified on different grounds. Modern typological descriptions, on the contrary, tend to construct classifications of compound words, which would take into account both their structure and semantic features. The author suggests to choose the Morphology of constructions as the basis of the description. It is a theoretical scheme within the framework of the Grammar of constructions, which treats the word not only as a lexical unit, but also as a construction arranged according to special rules. Compound words are constructions of a special kind, in which morphological, lexical, syntactic, phonotactic, as well as pragmatic rules interact for the organization of the whole. The article suggests a list of the main types of constructions, correlated with different language levels between grammar and lexis, depending on the nature of their components and the limitations on the modes of word formation. Some new trends related to the borrowed words of complex structure (“composites”) are noted.