Blending in Morphology

Blending is a way of forming new lexical units by putting together parts of existing words. Blends can also be called portmanteau words or telescope words. One defining feature of blends that is recognized in most morphological classifications is that blends combine the initial part or whole of one word with the final part or whole of another word, e.g., the blend brunch was formed by conjoining the initial part of the word breakfast and the final part of the word lunch. Blends are often formed in such a way that base words overlap, as in jumbrella where the base words jumbo and umbrella share the segment ‑umb‑. In some cases, blending involves clipping of both base words, in other cases one or both base words are incorporated into the blend, as in floordrobe (floor + wardrobe), frenemy (friend + enemy), or predictionary (prediction + dictionary). These examples represent only a fraction of possible configurations blends may have. The diversity of blends is a phenomenon that has been widely discussed, and one of the reasons why there is no agreement in literature as to whether blending is a productive process of regular word formation. One of the arguments to the contrary is that the exceptional formal diversity of blends makes it appear that their formation is completely unpredictable. The classifications of word formation systems differ in terms of what structures can be classified as blends, and many researchers admit that the category has fuzzy boundaries. Furthermore, the structural and semantic classifications of blends differ in terms of what formal or semantic attributes need to be considered defining characteristics of blends. One of the possible reasons for this is that blending can be regarded as either a subtype of compounding, a subtype of clipping, or an ad hoc process of a different nature; hence, different morphological classifications may use different criteria for defining the taxonomical status of blends. At the same time, growing evidence from quantitative studies of blends reveals notable regularities in their formation, phonological and semantic features, and patterns of use. Regarding the patterns of use, it is widely acknowledged that blends are often used as expressive means in such contexts as mass media, advertisement, or slang that imply a comparatively high degree of playfulness or a need for attention-catching linguistic means. Thus, the playful character of blends is sometimes denoted a defining characteristic of this type of word formation. Blending is attested in a number of typologically diverse languages, though there is evidence of its wider dissemination in Indo-European languages, and a vast majority of research works on blending covers English blends or blends in other European languages.