Spelling of compound words in Hungarian

Abstract

The author has paid efforts earlier to start the elaboration of the Hungarian General Keyword System. In this paper the author attempts to clarify one of the critical issues for the work which is the problem of spelling compound words either as a single word or as two words in Hungarian. The basic grammatical principles are overviewed which are formulated in word spelling rules, some simple consequences of those rules are pointed out and illustrated through examples. Several unsolved questions are discussed, including designated structures. The solutions proposed are based logically on similar linguistical phenomena, and language historical aspects are also considered as arguments.