Blend word

In linguistics, a blend word or a blend is a word formed from parts of two or more other words. These parts are sometimes, but not always, morphemes.

Linguistics

Blends abridge then combine lexemes to form a new word. Defining a true blend is complicated by the difficulty of determining which parts of the new word are "recoverable" (have roots which can be distinguished).[1]

Blends can be divided into three groups:[1]

  1. Phonemic Overlap: a syllable or part of a syllable is shared between two words
  2. Clipping: two words are shortened then compounded
  3. Phonemic Overlap and Clipping: two words are shortened to a shared syllable and then compounded

Formation

Most blends are formed by one of the following methods:

  1. The end of one word is appended to the beginning of the other (see portmanteau). For example, brunch is a blend of breakfast and lunch.
    • simultaneous (5) + broadcast (2) → simulcast (3, exception)
    • smoke (1) + fog (1) → smog (1)
    • spoon (1) + fork (1) → spork (1)
  2. The beginnings of two words are combined. For example, cyborg is a blend of cybernetic and organism.
  3. Two words are blended around a common sequence of sounds. For example, the word californication is a blend of California and fornication, and the word motel is a blend of motor and hotel
  4. Multiple sounds from two component words are blended, while mostly preserving the sounds' order. Poet Lewis Carroll was well known for these kinds of blends. An example of this is the word slithy, a blend of lithe and slimy.

A blended word may undergo further modification in form or meaning over time, and the meanings of its parts can become obsolete. Malinger may have developed from a blend in old French of malade (ill), maigre (meager) and haingre (haggard).[2] When two words are combined in their entirety, the result is considered a compound word rather than a blend. For example, bagpipe is a compound, not a blend, of bag and pipe.

Blending of two roots

Blending can also apply to roots rather than words, for instance in Israeli Hebrew:

"There are two possible etymological analyses for Israeli Hebrew כספר kaspár ‘bank clerk, teller’. The first is that it consists of (Hebrew>)Israeli כסף késef ‘money’ and the (International/Hebrew>)Israeli agentive suffix ר- -ár. The second is that it is a quasi-portmanteau word which blends כסף késef ‘money’ and (Hebrew>)Israeli ספר √spr ‘count’. Israeli Hebrew כספר kaspár started as a brand name but soon entered the common language. Even if the second analysis is the correct one, the final syllable ר- -ár apparently facilitated nativization since it was regarded as the Hebrew suffix ר- -år (probably of Persian pedigree), which usually refers to craftsmen and professionals, for instance as in Mendele Mocher Sforim’s coinage סמרטוטר smartutár ‘rag-dealer’."[5]

Lexical selection

Main article: portmanteau

Blending may occur with an error in lexical selection, the process by which a speaker uses his semantic knowledge to choose words. Lewis Carroll's explanation, which gave rise to the use of 'portmanteau' for such combinations, was:

Humpty Dumpty's theory, of two meanings packed into one word like a portmanteau, seems to me the right explanation for all. For instance, take the two words "fuming" and "furious." Make up your mind that you will say both words ... you will say "frumious."[6]

The errors are based on similarity of meanings, rather than phonological similarities, and the morphemes or phonemes stay in the same position within the syllable.[7]

Use

Some languages, like Japanese, encourage the shortening and merging of borrowed foreign words (as in gairaigo), because they are long or difficult to pronounce in the target language. For example, karaoke, a combination of the Japanese word kara (meaning empty) and the clipped form oke of the English loanword "orchestra" (J. ōkesutora オーケストラ), is a Japanese blend that has entered the English language.

Many corporate brand names, trademarks, and initiatives, as well as names of corporations and organizations themselves, are blends. For example, Wiktionary, one of Wikipedia's sister projects, is a blend of wiki and dictionary.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Gries, Stefan Th. (2004). "Shouldn't it be breakfunch? A quantitative analysis of blend structure in English" (PDF). Linguistics 42 (3): 639–667. doi:10.1515/ling.2004.021. Retrieved 2011-03-24.
  2. ↑ Harper, Douglas. "Malinger".
  3. ↑ Klein, Ernest (1987). A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language. Jerusalem: Carta. See p. 97.
  4. ↑ Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2003). Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 1-4039-1723-X. See p. 66.
  5. ↑ Zuckermann 2003, p. 67.
  6. ↑ Carroll, Lewis (2009). Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-955829-2.
  7. ↑ Fromkin, Victoria; Rodman, R.; Hyams, N. (2007). An Introduction to Language (Eighth ed.). Boston: Thomson Wadsworth. ISBN 1-4130-1773-8.

External links

Look up blend word in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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