SOME DEBATABLE ISSUES OF THE THEORY OF UNIVERBATION (on the material of V. S. Elistratov’s “Explanatory Dictionary of Living Russian Speech”)

The paper studies some debatable issues of the sufficiently developed theory of univerbalization. Univerbalization is a compression word formation where a new word is created on the basis of a word combination to which it is synonymous (marshrutka, zachetka, zelenka, Tret’yakovka, Leninka, Grazhdanka, etc.). The article also describes other approaches to this phenomenon as well as the functions of univerbals in speech. The article focuses on the debatable issues of univerbalization theory, which include the following: the time of the emergence and spreading of univerbalization and phenomena functionally similar to it in Russian language; the connection with a certain historical epoch or some signifi cant shorter time period; the connection of univerbalization and other ways of condensation with the so-called “law of economy of language means”; the stylistic markedness of univerbals; the territorial, professional, socio-cultural, etc. prerequisites for the emergence of univerbals. An assumption is made that the media digital space intensively destroys the boundaries between sociolects, which is reflected in the functioning of univerbals in modern Russian speech. The material for the study was mainly lexicographic data from the “Explanatory Dictionary of Living Russian Speech” by V. S. Elistratov.