disinformation on Uralic

[Johanna Laakso]

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Fejes László <lounapoder at uze.net> wrote:

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> 	I would like to mention two problems in Uralistics.  The first is my own field, compounding. First of all, I know no proper definition for compounded word in Uralistics (not even in general linguistics). Basically there are two points of view to say that a structure is a compounding.  One of them is related to the stress: if there are two "words" (stems which occur also independently) under one stress, it is a compounded word.  The other is related to meaning: if there are two "words" and their meaning is not equal with the sum of the meaning of the same words occurring independently, it is a compounded word.  Of course there are words which have one stress but no special meaning (asztalláb, merenranta) and also words with more stress can have special meaning (for example összetett szó 'compounded word' as a linguistic term, Rus. zheleznaya doroga, all the phrases etc.).
> 	Interestingly, the real criterion to tell if a structure is a compounding is orthography: do we write the structure in one word or not.  For example, Lytkin argues in the Komi Grammar (1955, 77.), that kört tuj 'railway < iron way' is not a compounding.  In Komi this structure is said with one stress only (on the first syllable), and the meaning is special, of course (the most common example for more words with a special meaning in the Russian literature is zheleznaya doroga). In Komi the structure is written in two words because it is written  in two words in Russian.
> 	The thing is really confusing if we look at it in a contrastive way. If we believe the grammars of Finnish and Komi, we have to say that 'railway' is a compounding in Finnish (rautatie '<iron way') but a syntagm in Komi.  But if examine these structures we have to say that both of them has one stress and a special meaning, and the position of the structure like that is the same in the whole grammar of these languages.
> 	This problem is quite wide and not just "one misbelieve", but I think it is worth to remember.
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> 	The second problem is a simple misbelieve: Lytkin wrote that the common vocabulary of Komi and Udmurt is about 80% of the vocabulary of these languages.  This statement is based on the text of a short poem.  The truth is, that the common vocabulary is not more than 20-30%.  It is stressed more times by Csúcs, unfortunately I could not find any place now.
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