Word formation processes in the Mongolic languages: challenges and opportunities

The article deals with the unresolved issues in the study of word formation in the Mongolic languages, namely, the prevailing affixal approach. We have described the types of word-building, formants and some other units of the word-formation system forming affixal means in terms of the affixal approach. It should be noted that the current problems in the study of the Mongolic languages word-formation system include issues related to the inventory of agglutinative affixes, their polyfunctional and polysemantic character. To determine the basic unit of word-formation, and to systematize the ways of word-building are other important issues as well. We emphasize that with the turn of linguistics to the content of the language special attention in studying word formation processes in the Mongolic languages should be paid to semantic ways of word building. It is necessary to take into consideration the anthro- pocentric paradigm in linguistics, namely, data developed in cognitive linguistics, nomination theory, linguo-cultural studies, disciplines appealing to ethnic linguistic consciousness and problems of linguistic thinking.