Polymotivated compound nouns in Russian language

Abstract

This article presents the results of the survey of polymotivation in word-formation of compound nouns in the modern Russian language. Polymotivation as well as homonymous, synonymous, and antonymous in the formation of compound nouns is a kind of formal-semantic relations between the components of compound nouns. A polymotivated word has different direct derivation relations with different words with the same root because of being the result of different motivations, i. e. different word-formation ways or methods. Therefore, they have different word-formation structures and corresponding different word-formation meanings. Polymotivated words take up about 2,5% of compound nouns in the modern Russian language. Most of them are two-motivated and only some are three-motivated. Polymotivated compound nouns are classified according to their motivations, i. e. their word-formation ways: there are 12 types of two-motivated words and 3 typed three-motivated words. Two-motivated compound nouns can be formed in the same word-formation way, which is pure compounding with different components, or in two different word-formation ways, mainly pure compounding and suffixation, or rarely pure compounding combined with suffixation and suffixation. Three-motivated compound nouns are formed in three different ways: pure compounding, compounding combined with suffixation and suffixation or pure compounding/compounding combined with suffixation and suffixation with different suffixes. The polymotivation of Russian compound nouns shows diversity and complication in the mutual relation between the form and meaning of the word-formation system in Russian language.