This research paper deals with the topic of lexical blending. There, newly created words through this process of word formation are called blends or hybrids or portmanteau words. The latter was popularized in Lewis Carroll’s poem "Through the Looking Glass" in which he, for example, describes a "frabjous day", a day that is both fabulous and joyous. One of the first blends known of, which is still in our vocabulary is the word "smash". It is a blend of "smack" and "mash", which is known since early 1700. "Smash" is a perfect example of a blend that is very well integrated into the modern Standard English. Therefore most likely most people would not have defined it as a blend. So this example indicates, that it is sometimes difficult to identify a word as a blend and moreover to identify its constituents.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Theoretical Foundation
The purpose of blends
Lexical Blending as a process of word formation
Typology according to Adrienne Lehrer
Typology according to Elke Ronneberger-Sibold
The Research Project
Description
Results
Conclusion
Research Objectives and Themes
This research project investigates the systematic nature of lexical blending by analyzing a corpus of neologisms collected from various U.S. magazines. The primary goal is to apply the linguistic typologies of Adrienne Lehrer and Elke Ronneberger-Sibold to these blends to understand their structural characteristics, transparency levels, and the influence of the target audience's median age on their occurrence.
- Analysis of structural patterns in contemporary lexical blends.
- Evaluation of blend transparency according to Ronneberger-Sibold's typology.
- Correlation between magazine genres, reader demographics, and blend frequency.
- Comparison of Lehrer's and Ronneberger-Sibold's typological frameworks.
Excerpt from the Book
Lexical Blending as a process of word formation
Word formation is a branch of morphology, which is the study on the structure and form of words. In opposite to word formation, inflectional morphology focuses on the study of words in certain grammatical categories. So to say inflectional morphology does not create new lexemes, but through word formation new words are created, and therefore word formation is considered as a process that expands the vocabulary of a language. Not every process of word formation is equally productive. Types of word formations which are highly productive, meaning that many neologisms are created, are compounding, conversion and derivation, whereas derivation is subdivided into prefixation and suffixation. The lower productivity forms of word formation are called shortenings, which include clippings, back-formations, blends and acronyms. So in those processes not as many neologisms are created. A similarity of the different types of shortenings is the length of their output in relation to their input: As the name indicates the newly created word is shorter than its constituents. Lexical blending fits into the group of shortenings, and in orders to differentiate it from the other kinds they will be explained briefly.
Summary of Chapters
Introduction: This chapter introduces the topic of lexical blending, defines relevant terminology, and outlines the research objective of analyzing blends using established linguistic typologies.
Theoretical Foundation: This section details the purpose of blends, situates blending within morphological word-formation processes, and explains the specific typological approaches of Lehrer and Ronneberger-Sibold.
The Research Project: This chapter describes the methodology, including the selection of magazines based on demographics, and presents the collected data and analytical results.
Conclusion: This final chapter synthesizes the research findings, confirming that blends follow systematic structures and that there is a discernible relationship between reader age and blend transparency.
Keywords
Lexical blending, morphology, word formation, portmanteau words, neologisms, typology, Adrienne Lehrer, Elke Ronneberger-Sibold, transparency, magazine analysis, linguistics, splinter, clipping, contour blends, semantic gaps.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the fundamental subject of this research paper?
The paper explores the process of lexical blending—a word-formation mechanism where parts of words are combined to create new terms—and examines how these blends function systematically in modern magazine language.
What are the central thematic areas?
The research focuses on the structure of blends, the linguistic typologies of Lehrer and Ronneberger-Sibold, the role of reader demographics (median age), and the level of transparency in newly coined words.
What is the primary research question?
The study asks whether blends are truly arbitrary in nature or if they follow systematic rules, and whether the two chosen typological frameworks can successfully categorize and explain the blends found in contemporary media.
Which scientific methods are utilized?
The researchers conducted a corpus-based analysis by selecting 12 different U.S. magazines, identifying 15 specific blends, and evaluating them against two distinct structural and functional linguistic typologies.
What is covered in the main body of the work?
The body covers the definition of lexical blending, the specific classification systems developed by Lehrer and Ronneberger-Sibold, the methodology of gathering data from magazines, and the quantitative analysis of the results.
Which keywords characterize the work?
Core terms include lexical blending, morphology, typology, transparency, neologisms, and word-formation.
How does the reader's median age affect the frequency of blends?
The research suggests an inverse relationship: magazines with a younger readership tend to contain a higher number of blends, whereas magazines with an older demographic feature fewer, but often more transparent, blends.
Why did the authors choose the Urban Dictionary as a source?
The authors used the Urban Dictionary because it served as the only accessible resource for identifying the meanings and source constituents of certain youth-oriented coinages that are not yet recorded in academic dictionaries.
What conclusion does the study reach regarding the nature of blends?
The study concludes that lexical blending is not an arbitrary process; rather, it is a complex and systematic one that can be successfully analyzed and categorized using the provided linguistic frameworks.
- Quote paper
- Thea Resbot (Author), 2015, Lexical Blending. Analysis of blends found in magazines according to the typology of Adrienne Lehrer and Elke Ronneberger-Sibol, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/388876
