Abstract

This paper offers a descriptive survey of compounding in contemporary Russian. First of all, it focuses on the nature of the constituting elements of Russian compounds and on the distinction between compounds and other constructs such as derived words, phrases and phrasal lexemes. Then it provides a detailed typology of Russian compounds according to formal, semantic and usage properties. The survey allows to make some generalisations about Russian compounds as regards major theoretical issues and to compare the results with the available typological data about compounding.