The power of slanguage:
Form and meaning of English blends
Natalia Beliaeva
PhD student
Victoria University of Wellington
Blends/Portmanteau words
Brangelina
Zorse
Blending is...
• an instance of compounding (Kubozono, 1989;
Marchand, 1969; Renner, 2006)
• an instance of shortening (Adams, 1973; Berg,
1998; Cannon, 1986; Devereux, 1984; Kelly, 1998; López
Rúa, 2002)
• a mixture of both
• an instance of creative word formation
(Lehrer 2003)
Blending is...
various criteria (see Table 1), the most
accepted are:
– 2 elements
– merging words together so that some material
is lost
– formation that does not employ morphemes
Blends are made of...
• source words (Cannon, 1987; Gries, 2004b; Kemmer,
2003; Kubozono, 1990; Lehrer, 1998)
•
•
•
•
source forms (López Rúa, 2002, 2004a, 2004b, 2007)
component words (Kelly, 1998)
input words (Brdar-Szabó & Brdar, 2008)
formatives (Fradin, 2000)
Blends are made of...
Source words
Source forms
blizzaster <- blizzard + disaster
aireoke <- air guitar + karaoke
flunami <- flu + tsunami
pro-mia <- pro + bulimia
e-linquent <- e- + delinquent
‘Source forms’ is used when the distinction is relevant
Splinters: approaches
• any “shorter substitutes” of words (Adams,
1973)
• those word parts that have started to be
used productively in more than one blend,
e.g. -(a)holic, -(a)nomics (e.g. Bauer, 2006)
Splinters: criteria
• not full words;
• not morphemes registered in dictionaries
(OED, CED), i.e. words containing e-, m-, –logue, -licious, adelic are excluded from the analysis)
Blend is a lexical item formed by merging
together two (or more) source forms, so
that:
1) only part of their orthographical and/or
phonological material is preserved,
2) no transparent analysis into morphs is
possible.
Research questions
• What properties of the source words influence
the phonology and structure of the blend and
in what way?
• Do the semantic relationships between the
source words influence the form of the blend?
Data for the research
• 501 blend (404 nouns, 50 adjectives, 45
verbs, 2 adverbs)
• collected from WordSpy, The Rice
University Neologisms Database, Urban
Dictionary, The Word of the Year
collections, etc
• analysed in terms of phonology, structure,
and semantics
Structure: types of blends
AB + CD= AD (Plag, 2003)
• Types found in our data: AC, AD, AW, WD,
WC, BD, ACE, ACEH, ACF, etc. (see Table 2)
• 3 or 4 element formations are marginal blends
rather than acronyms
(e.g. Christmahanukwanzadan)
•
•
•
•
WD = AD
WC = AC
AW?
WW?
Blend types in the data
Blend types, simplified
Blend
type
N
Blend
type
N
WD
178
BD
2
Blend type
N
AD
174
ACE
2
AD
333
AW
94
ACW
2
AW
79
WW
31
ACEH
2
WW
28
infix
21
ADF
1
AC
18
AC
16
WCF
1
total
458
acr
7
ACEG
1
ACF
3
AWEG
1
WC
2
Phonology: individual phonemes
effects (sonority)
Phonology: individual phonemes
effects (sonority)
Phonology: individual phonemes
effects (frequency)
Phonology: individual phonemes
effects (frequency)
Phonology: syllable effects
Syllable
structure of
the blend
Blend type
AD
AC
AW
WW
YY
131
5
35
27
YN
115
4
0
0
NY
26
4
43
1
NN
61
5
1
0
Total
333
18
79
28
Total
YY - whole syllables both from w1 and w2
YN - whole syllables from w1
NY - whole syllables from w2
NN - whole syllables not preserved from w1 or w2
458
Phonology: syllable effects
Phonology: syllable effects
Structure:
Form of the blend vs source word length
Structure:
Form of the blend vs source word length
Structure:
Form of the blend vs source word length
Is there any morphology here?
• parahawking
(infixation) ->
parahawk (AW)
• enterdrainment
(infixation) ->
enterdrain (AW)
• adverteasement
(infixation) ->
advertease (AW)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
intextication
engayed
kleptopenia
congreenient
adwonderize
liboobrian
prowebstinate
horobviouscope
Semantics: 3 semantic types of blends
based on classification from Bauer(2006)
Semantic type
Number of
Examples
blends in the
data set
paradigmatic
origin
108
syntagmatic
origin
370
syntagmatic
22
origin
(reversed order)
chofa <- chair + sofa
blizzaster <- blizzard +
disaster
fake-ation <- fake vacation
briet <- bridal diet
flunami <- tsunami flu
epiphanot <- not an
epiphany
Semantics: source words combinations
extracted from COCA
Type of source word
combination
Total number of
combinations in
COCA
Examples
coordinative
11676
chair and sofa
coordinative
(reversed order)
subordinative
5550
sofa and chair
1664
fake vacation
Semantics: Semantic types of blends vs.
frequency of source words combinations
Semantics: Form of the blend vs. frequency
of source words combinations
Semantics: further steps
• Pilot study
• Online survey
Pilot study: description
• 5 subjects, students of the PhD thesis group
• 14 blend words, 4 definitions created for
each: containing w1, w2, w1+w2 or no source
words (see Pilot study task sample)
• participants evaluated the definitions of
blends on a scale from -3 to +3
• response time not measured
Pilot study: research questions
• Which type of the definitions of the blend
words receives the highest mark from the
subjects?
• Is the most highly ranked definition of the
same type for the AC and AD blends?
• What other factors except the blend type
influence the responses?
Pilot study: results
AC
Pilot study: results
Pilot study: results
Conclusions: Phonology
• Blends are subject to general prosodic rules
(earlier findings confirmed)
• Individual phonemes matter (the more
frequent the phoneme the more likely it is
included in the blend)
• There are differences between types of
blends in the placement of the switch point
with regard to syllable constituents of w1
andw2
Conclusions: Structure
• Prototypical and marginal types of blends
distinguished
• Form of the blend is sensitive to source
word length
• Morphemes are not totally ignored by
blends (e.g. infixation blends)
Conclusions: Semantics
• Subordinative combinations of source words
do not correlate with the semantic type,
coordinative combinations do
• The form of the blend (AD or AC) is subject to
the frequency of subordinative combinations
of the source words
• The pilot study results showed that there is
interaction between the subjects’ perception of
the blends, and 1) the form of the blends, 2)
length of the second source word.
References:
Adams, V. (1973). An introduction to modern English word formation. London: Longman.
Bauer, L. (2006). Compounds and minor word-formation types. In B. Aarts & A. McMahon (Eds.), The
handbook of English linguistics (pp. 483–506). Oxford: Blackwell.
Berg, T. (1998). Linguistic structure and change: An explanation from language processing. Oxford: OUP.
Bertinetto, P. M. (to appear). Blends and syllabic structure: A four-fold comparison. In M. Lorente, N.
Alturo, E. Boix, M. R. Lloret, & L. Payrató (Eds.), La gramàtica i la semàntica per a l’estudi de la
variació. Barcelona: PPU-Secció de Lingüística Catalana de la Universitat de Barcelona.
Brdar-Szabó, R., & Brdar, M. (2008). On the marginality of lexical blending. Jezikoslovlje, 9(1-2), 171–194.
Cannon, G. (1986). Blends in English word formation. Linguistics, 24(4), 725–753.
Cannon, G. (1987). Historical change and English word-formation. New York, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main &
Paris: Peter Lang.
Devereux, R. (1984). Shortenings, blends and acronyms. Word Ways, 17, 210–215.
Fandrych, I. (2008). Pagad, chillax and jozi: A multi-level approach to acronyms, blends, and clippings.
Nawa Journal of Language and Communication, 2(2), 71–88.
Fradin, B. (2000). Combining forms, blends and related phenomena. In U. Doleschal & A. M. Thornton
(Eds.), Extragrammatical and marginal morphology, LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics (pp.
11–59). München: Lincom Europa.
Gries, S. T. (2004a). Shouldn’t it be breakfunch? A quantitative analysis of blend structure in English.
Linguistics, 42(3), 639–667.
Gries, S. T. (2004b). Some characteristics of English morphological blends. Papers from the 38th meeting
of the Chicago Linguistics Society: the Panels, ed. M. Andronis et al. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic
Society.
Gries, S. T. (2004c). Isn’t that Fantabulous? How similarity motivates intentional morphological blends in
English. Language, culture and mind. Michael Achard, Susanne Kemmer (eds.) (pp. 415–428).
Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI).
Jin, M.-J. (2005). English blends: A descriptive study of their distributional patterns and prosodic
features. The Modern Linguistic Society of Korea, 20(3), 195–231.
References:
Kelly, M. H. (1998). To ‘brunch’ or to ‘brench’: Some aspects of blend structure. Linguistics, (36),
579–90.
Kemmer, S. (2003). Schemas and lexical blends. In H. Cuyckens, T. Berg, R. Dirven, & K.-U.
Panther (Eds.), Motivation in language: from case grammar to cognitive linguistics. A
Festschrift for Gunter Radden (pp. 69–97). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Kubozono, H. (1989). Syntactic and rhythmic effects on downstep in Japanese. Phonology, 6, 39–
67.
Kubozono, H. (1990). Phonological constraints on blending in English as a case for phonologymorphology interface. Yearbook of Morphology, (3), 1–20.
Lehrer, A. (1998). Scapes, holics, and thons: The semantics of combining forms. American Speech,
73, 3–28.
López Rúa, P. (2002). On the structure of acronyms and neighbouring categories: a prototypebased account. English Language and Linguistics, 6(1), 31–60. doi:10.1017/S136067430200103X
López Rúa, P. (2004a). The Categorial Continuum of English Blends. English Studies, 1(86), 63–76.
López Rúa, P. (2004b). Acronyms & Co.: A typology of typologies. Estudios Ingleses de la
Universidad Complutense, 12, 109–129.
López Rúa, P. (2007). Keeping up with the times: Lexical creativity in electronic communication.
In J. Munat (Ed.), Lexical creativity, texts and contexts, Studies in Functional and Structural
Linguistics (pp. 137–159). Amsterdam & Philadelfia: Benjamins.
Marchand, H. (1969). The categories and types of present-day English word-formation: a
synchronic-diachronic approach (Second, completely revised and enlarged ed.). München:
Beck.
Mines, M. A., Hanson, B. F., & Shoup, J. E. (1978). Frequency of occurrence of phonemes in
conversational English. Language and Speech, 21(3), 221–241.
Plag, I. (2003). Word-formation in English. Cambridge textbooks in linguistics. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Renner, V. (2006). Les composés coordinatifs en anglais contemporain (PhD dissertation).
Université Lumière-Lyon 2, Lyon.
Thank you!
Natalia Beliaeva
LALS, Victoria University of Wellington
[email protected]