Blend word

In linguistics, a blend (sometimes called blend word, lexical blend, portmanteau) but instead a mere ''splinter'', a fragment that is normally meaningless. In the words of Valerie Adams:

In words such as ''motel, boatel'' and ''Lorry-Tel'', ''hotel'' is represented by various shorter substitutes – ''otel, tel'' or ''el'' – which I shall call splinters. Words containing splinters I shall call blends.Adams attributes the term ''splinter'' to J. M. Berman, "Contribution on blending," ''Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik'' 9 (1961), 278–281.

Classification

Blends of two or more words may be classified from each of three viewpoints: morphotactic, morphonological, and morphosemantic.Elisa Mattiello, "Blends." Chap. 4 (pp. 111–140) of ''Extra-grammatical Morphology in English: Abbreviations, Blends, Reduplicatives, and Related Phenomena'' (Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2013; ; ).

Morphotactic classification

Blends may be classified morphotactically into two kinds: ''total'' and ''partial''.

Total blends

In a total blend, each of the words creating the blend is reduced to a mere splinter. Some linguists limit blends to these (perhaps with additional conditions): for example, Ingo Plag considers "proper blends" to be total blends that semantically are coordinate, the remainder being "shortened compounds".

Commonly for English blends, the beginning of one word is followed by the end of another:
*''boom'' + ''hoist'' → ''boost'' Example provided by Mattiello of a blend of this kind.
*''breakfast'' + ''lunch'' → ''brunch'' 

Much less commonly in English, the beginning of one word may be followed by the beginning of another:
*''teleprinter'' + ''exchange'' → ''telex'' 
*''American'' + ''Indian'' → ''Amerind'' 
Some linguists do not regard beginning+beginning concatenations as blends, instead calling them complex clippings, clipping compounds or clipped compounds.

Unusually in English, the end of one word may be followed by the end of another:
*''Red Bull'' + ''margarita'' → ''bullgarita'' 
*''Hello Kitty'' + ''delicious'' → ''kittylicious'' 

A splinter of one word may replace part of another, as in three coined by Lewis Carroll in " Jabberwocky":
*''chuckle'' + ''snort'' → ''chortle'' 
*''flimsy'' + ''miserable'' → ''mimsy''
*''slimy'' + ''lithe'' → ''slithy'' 
They are sometimes termed ''intercalative'' blends; these words are among the original "portmanteaus" for which this meaning of the word was created. Suzanne Kemmer, "Schemas and lexical blends." In Hubert C. Cuyckens et al., eds, ''Motivation in Language: From Case Grammar to Cognitive Linguistics: Studies in Honour of Günter Radden'' (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2003; , ).

Partial blends

In a partial blend, one entire word is concatenated with a splinter from another. Some linguists do not recognize these as blends.

An entire word may be followed by a splinter:
*''dumb'' + ''confound'' → ''dumbfound'' 
*''fan'' + ''magazine'' → ''fanzine'' Example provided by Mattiello of a blend of this kind. (Etymologically, ''fan'' is a clipping of ''fanatic''; but it has since become lexicalized.)

A splinter may be followed by an entire word:
*''Brad'' + ''Angelina'' → ''Brangelina'' 
*''American'' + ''Indian'' → ''Amerindian'' 

An entire word may replace part of another:
*''adorable'' + ''dork'' → ''adorkable'' 
*''disgusting'' + ''gross'' → ''disgrossting'' 
These have also been called ''sandwich'' words, and classed among ''intercalative'' blends.

(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.'')

Morphonological classification

Morphonologically, blends fall into two kinds: ''overlapping'' and ''non-overlapping''.

Overlapping blends

Overlapping blends are those for which the ingredients' consonants, vowels or even syllables overlap to some extent. The overlap can be of different kinds. These are also called haplologic blends.

There may be an overlap that is both phonological and orthographic, but with no other shortening:
*''anecdote'' + ''dotage'' → ''anecdotage'' 
*''pal'' + ''alimony'' → ''palimony'' 

The overlap may be both phonological and orthographic, and with some additional shortening to at least one of the ingredients:
*''California'' + ''fornication'' → ''Californication'' Elisa Mattiello, "Lexical index." Appendix (pp. 287–329) to ''Extra-grammatical Morphology in English: Abbreviations, Blends, Reduplicatives, and Related Phenomena'' (Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2013; ; ).
*''picture'' + ''dictionary'' → ''pictionary'' 

Such an overlap may be discontinuous:
*''politician'' + ''pollution'' → ''pollutician'' Example provided by Mattiello of a blend of this kind, slightly amended.
*''beef'' + ''buffalo'' → ''beefalo'' 
These are also termed imperfect blends.

It can occur with three components:
*''camisade'' + ''cannibalism'' + ''ballistics'' → ''camibalistics'' Example provided by Mattiello of a blend of this kind. The word is found in '' Finnegans Wake''; Mattiello credits Almuth Grésillon, ''La règle et le monstre: Le mot-valise. Interrogations sur la langue, à partir d'un corpus de Heinrich Heine'' (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1984), 15, for bringing it to her attention.
*''meander'' + ''Neanderthal'' + ''tale'' → ''meandertale'' 

The phonological overlap need not also be orthographic:
*''back'' + ''acronym'' → ''backronym'' 
*''war'' + ''orgasm'' → ''wargasm'' 

If the phonological but non-orthographic overlap encompasses the whole of the shorter ingredient, as in
*''sin'' + ''cinema'' → ''sinema'' 
*''sham'' + ''champagne'' → ''shampagne'' 
then the effect depends on orthography alone. (They are also called orthographic blends.)

An orthographic overlap need not also be phonological:
*''smoke'' + ''fog'' → ''smog'' 
*''binary'' + ''unit'' → ''bit'' 

For some linguists, an overlap is a condition for a blend.

Non-overlapping blends

Non-overlapping blends (also called substitution blends) have no overlap, whether phonological or orthographic:
*''California'' + ''Mexico'' → ''Calexico'' 
*''beautiful'' + ''delicious'' → ''beaulicious'' 

Morphosemantic classification

Morphosemantically, blends fall into two kinds: ''attributive'' and ''coordinate''.

Attributive blends

Attributive blends (also called syntactic or telescope blends) are those in which one of the ingredients is the head and the other is attributive. A ''porta-light'' is a portable light, not a 'light-emitting' or light portability; ''light'' is the head. A ''snobject'' is a snobbery-satisfying object and not an objective or other kind of snob; object is the head.

As is also true for (conventional, non-blend) attributive compounds (among which ''bathroom'', for example, is a kind of room, not a kind of bath), the attributive blends of English are mostly head-final and mostly endocentric. As an example of an exocentric attributive blend, ''Fruitopia'' may metaphorically take the buyer to a fruity utopia (and not a utopian fruit); however, it is not a utopia but a drink.

Coordinate blends

Coordinate blends (also called associative or portmanteau blends) combine two words having equal status, and have two heads. Thus ''brunch'' is neither a breakfasty lunch nor a lunchtime breakfast but instead some hybrid of breakfast and lunch; '' Oxbridge'' is equally Oxford and Cambridge universities. This too parallels (conventional, non-blend) compounds: an ''actor–director'' is equally an actor and a director.

Two kinds of coordinate blends are particularly conspicuous: those that combine (near) synonyms:
*''gigantic'' + ''enormous'' → ''ginormous''
*''insinuation'' + ''innuendo'' → ''insinuendo''
and those that combine (near) opposites:
*''transmitter'' + ''receiver'' → ''transceiver''
*''friend'' + ''enemy'' → ''frenemy''

Blending of two roots

Blending can also apply to roots rather than words, for instance in Israeli Hebrew:
* רמזור ''ramzor'' 'traffic light' combines רמז √rmz 'hint' and אור ''or'' 'light'.
* מגדלור ''migdalor'' 'lighthouse' combines מגדל ''migdal'' 'tower' and אור ''or'' 'light'.
* Israeli דחפור ''dakhpór'' 'bulldozer' hybridizes ( Mishnaic Hebrew>) Israeli דחפ √dħp 'push' and (Biblical Hebrew>) Israeli חפר √ħpr 'dig' ..* Israeli שלטוט ''shiltút'' 'zapping, surfing the channels, flipping through the channels' derives from
** (i) (Hebrew>) Israeli שלט ''shalát'' 'remote control', an ellipsis – like English ''remote'' (but using the noun instead) – of the (widely known) compound שלט רחוק ''shalát rakhók'' – cf. the Academy of the Hebrew Language's שלט רחק ''shalát rákhak''; and
** (ii) (Hebrew>) Israeli שטוט ''shitút'' 'wandering, vagrancy'. Israeli שלטוט ''shiltút'' was introduced by the Academy of the Hebrew Language in ..1996. Synchronically, it might appear to result from reduplication of the final consonant of ''shalát'' 'remote control'.
* Another example of blending which has also been explained as mere reduplication is Israeli גחלילית ''gakhlilít'' 'fire-fly, glow-fly, ''Lampyris'''. This coinage by Hayyim Nahman Bialik blends (Hebrew>) Israeli גחלת ''gakhélet'' 'burning coal' with (Hebrew>) Israeli לילה ''láyla'' 'night'. Compare this with the unblended חכלילית ''khakhlilít'' '(black) redstart, '' Phœnicurus (Ernest Klein explains ''gakhlilít''. Since he is attempting to provide etymology, his description might be misleading if one agrees that Hayyim Nahman Bialik had blending in mind."

"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'."

Lexical selection

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."

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.

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. The Vietnamese language also encourages blend words formed from Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary. For example, the term Việt Cộng is derived from the first syllables of "Việt Nam" (Vietnam) and "Cộng sản" (communist).

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

* Acronym and initialism
* Amalgamation (names)
* Clipping (morphology)
* Conceptual blending
* Hybrid word
* List of blend words
* Phonestheme
* Phono-semantic matching
* Syllabic abbreviation
* Wiktionary category:English blends

Notes

References

External links

{{wiktionary

Word coinage