ON IDENTIFICATION OF A COMPOUND WORD IN THE CHUVASH LANGUAGE
The article is aimed at reviewing the basic principles of identifying a compound word in Turkic languages and in as much as the Chuvash language. The definition of the term “a compound word” by turcologists is presented which results in a clear-cut understanding that for defining these lexical units as inseparable the following indicators are of importance, viz. their semantic unity in defiance of the significance of the constituent parts of the composite, the obliteration of grammatical relations between the constituents of a compound word, the accentual unity. It is pointed out that the concept of inseparability is particularly “vulnerable” from the orthographic point of view so that it is interpreted differently by the linguists researching the problem in other languages. The difference of opinions is accounted for by a number of objective causes, viz. a) the lack of researches of the problems on composition of words in many languages as well as in the Chuvash language; b) the contradictory nature of the units under the review and the absence of a unified point of view concerning the phenomenon of compound words in turcology. Rather complicated and contradictory for the Chuvash orthography is the problem of inseparable, semi-separable and separable writing resulting from the complexity of the problem of delimiting a word and a combination of words and the failure to solve it by the linguistic science. The compound words correlating with izafat combinations are analyzed in the article as it is these compound words of this pattern in the Chuvash language that are composed in two ways. At the end it is summed up that the composition of a compound word is a complicated process. The orthography of the composites should be grounded on the objective laws of a language. Phonetic and grammatical characteristics as well as other peculiarities of a language under review should be taken into account.