Languages & Linguistics

Blending

Blending is a linguistic process that involves combining two or more words to create a new word or phrase. This process is often used in informal language and can result in the creation of new words that become part of the lexicon. Blending is a common feature of many languages and can be seen in a variety of contexts.

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4 Key excerpts on "Blending"

  • Book cover image for: All About Words & Linguistic Morphology
    The immense celebrations in Britain at the news of the relief of the Siege of Mafeking briefly created the verb to maffick , meaning to celebrate both extravagantly and publicly. Maffick was a back-formation from Mafeking , a place-name that was treated humorously as a gerund or participle. There are many other examples of back-formations in the English language. Blend In linguistics, a blend is a word formed from parts of two or more other words. These parts are sometimes, but not always, morphemes. Linguistics Blends deal with the action of abridging and then combining various lexemes to form a new word. However, the process of defining which words are true blends and which are not is more complicated. The difficulty comes in determining which parts of a new word are recoverable (its root can be distinguished). ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ There are many types of blends, based on how they are formed. Algeo, a linguist, proposed dividing blends into three groups: 1. Phonemic Overlap: a syllable or part of a syllable is shared between two words 2. Clipping: the shortening of two words and then compounding them 3. Phonemic Overlap and Clipping: shortening of two words to a shared syllable and then compounding However, classification of types of blends is not standard among all linguists. Formation Most blends are formed by one of the following methods: 1. The beginning of one word is added to the end of the other. For example, brunch is a blend of br eakfast and l unch . o simul taneous (5) + broad cast (2) → simulcast (3, exception) o sm oke (1) + f og (1) → smog (1) o sp oon (1) + f ork (1) → spork (1) 2. The beginnings of two words are combined. For example, cyborg is a blend of cyb ernetic and org anism . 3. Two words are blended around a common sequence of sounds.
  • Book cover image for: All About Words, Phrases & Vocabulary
    The immense celebrations in Britain at the news of the relief of the Siege of Mafeking briefly created the verb to maffick , meaning to celebrate both extravagantly and publicly. Maffick was a back-formation from Mafeking , a place-name that was treated humo-rously as a gerund or participle. There are many other examples of back-formations in the English language. Blend In linguistics, a blend is a word formed from parts of two or more other words. These parts are sometimes, but not always, morphemes. Linguistics Blends deal with the action of abridging and then combining various lexemes to form a new word. However, the process of defining which words are true blends and which are not is more complicated. The difficulty comes in determining which parts of a new word are recoverable (its root can be distinguished). ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ There are many types of blends, based on how they are formed. Algeo, a linguist, proposed dividing blends into three groups: 1. Phonemic Overlap: a syllable or part of a syllable is shared between two words 2. Clipping: the shortening of two words and then compounding them 3. Phonemic Overlap and Clipping: shortening of two words to a shared syllable and then compounding However, classification of types of blends is not standard among all linguists. Formation Most blends are formed by one of the following methods: 1. The beginning of one word is added to the end of the other. For example, brunch is a blend of br eakfast and l unch . o simul taneous (5) + broad cast (2) → simulcast (3, exception) o sm oke (1) + f og (1) → smog (1) o sp oon (1) + f ork (1) → spork (1) 2. The beginnings of two words are combined. For example, cyborg is a blend of cyb ernetic and org anism . 3. Two words are blended around a common sequence of sounds.
  • Book cover image for: Extra-grammatical Morphology in English
    eBook - PDF

    Extra-grammatical Morphology in English

    Abbreviations, Blends, Reduplicatives, and Related Phenomena

    Blending as an extra-grammatical phenomenon 139 tal make-up. Blends must preserve as many segments from the source words as possible (Cannon 1986; Gries 2004a; Bat-El 2006) in order to guarantee recoverability (see overlapping blends). This criterion corre- sponds to the notion of “recognisability” in Gries (forth.). ― Semantic blocking. A blend cannot be formed in a given language if it coincides with a homophone or homograph word of that language. In ac- cordance with Aronoff’s (1976: 43) notion of “blocking”, the formation of a blend like * smoke (← sm(ell + ch)oke) would be blocked, because it has the same form as an existing word. Moreover, the segments from the source words must not coincide with existing lexemes. Accordingly, blends such as *breaklunch or *lunchfast are blocked, because break and fast are existing English words (cf. broccoflower where flower is an existing word; see Recoverability above). ― Prominence. One of the constituents of a blend must be prominent in terms of length, stress, and, in the attributive type, position and meaning (see Salience below). In other words, one component is the matrix: it provides the rhythmical contour, the rhyme, and generally corresponds to – or is one syllable shorter than – the whole formation. In the attribu- tive type, this component is normally the right-most element and plays the role of semantic head. ― Salience. The order of the blend components must respect the semantic criterion of salience. For instance, in wintertainment, the second element (entertainment) is the most salient in determining the meaning of the blend, and therefore occurs in head position. Of course, other factors may come into play in determining the order of the source words: for in- stance, in brunch, breakfast comes before lunch not only because this latter is the matrix and more prominent word, but also because this order iconically reproduces the chronological sequence of the two meals.
  • Book cover image for: Studies by Einar Haugen
    eBook - PDF

    Studies by Einar Haugen

    Presented on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, April 19, 1971

    The term is ambiguous because it can mean either that the language has adopted elements of foreign origin at some time in the past, or that it shows mutually in-consistent elements in its present-day structure as a result of such adoption. Yet we know that great numbers of words in English which once were adopted are now quite indistinguishable from native words by any synchronic test. Schuchardt insisted that all languages were mixed, but in saying this he gave the word so wide an application that its value for characterizing individual languages would seem to be greatly reduced. In some circles the term 'mixed' or 'hybrid' has actually acquired a pejorative sense, so that reformers have set to work 'purifying' the language without seeing clearly what they were about. For the reasons here given, the term 'mixture' is not used in the present discussion. It may have its place in a popularized presentation of the 4 Paul, Prinzipien 338; Meillet, La méthode comparative 82 (Oslo, 1925); Meillet, Linguistique historique et linguistique générale 76 (Paris, 1921). THE ANALYSIS OF LINGUISTIC BORROWING 163 problem, but in technical discussion it is more usefully replaced by the term 'borrowing', which we shall now proceed to define. 3. A DEFINITION OF BORROWING At first blush the term 'borrowing' might seem to be almost as inept for the process we wish to analyze as 'mixture'. The metaphor implied is certainly absurd, since the borrowing takes place without the lender's consent or even awareness, and the borrower is under no obligation to repay the loan. One might as well call it stealing, were it not that the owner is deprived of nothing and feels no urge to recover his goods. The process might be called an adoption, for the speaker does adopt elements from a second language into his own. But what would one call a word that had been adopted — an adoptee? Anthropologists speak of 'diffusion' in connection with a similar process in the spread of non-linguistic cultural items.
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