Blend (linguistics)

In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together.Garner's Modern American Usage
p. 644. English examples include ''smog'', coined by blending ''smoke'' and ''fog'', and ''motel'', from ''motor'' (''motorist'') and ''hotel''.

A blend is similar to a contraction. On one hand, mainstream blends tend to be formed at a particular historical moment followed by a rapid rise in popularity. On the other hand, contractions are formed by the gradual drifting together of words over time due to the words commonly appearing together in sequence, such as ''do not'' naturally becoming ''don't'' (phonologically, becoming ). A blend also differs from a compound, which fully preserves the stems of the original words. The British lecturer Valerie Adams's 1973 ''Introduction to Modern English Word-Formation'' explains that "In words such as ''motel''..., ''hotel'' is represented by various shorter substitutes – ''otel''... – 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), pp. 278–281. Thus, at least one of the parts of a blend, strictly speaking, is not a complete morpheme, but instead a mere splinter or leftover word fragment. For instance, ''starfish'' is a compound, not a blend, of ''star'' and ''fish'', as it includes both words in full. However, if it were called a "''stish''" or a "''starsh''", it would be a blend. Furthermore, when blends are formed by shortening established compounds or phrases, they can be considered clipped compounds, such as ''romcom'' for ''romantic comedy''.

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:
*''breakfast'' + ''lunch'brunch''Example provided by Elisa Mattiello's chapter "Blends" (of ''Extra-grammatical Morphology in English: Abbreviations, Blends, Reduplicatives, and Related Phenomena'', Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2013) of a blend of this kind.

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 two coined by Lewis Carroll in "Jabberwocky":
*''chuckle'' + ''snort'chortle''
*''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 Elisa Mattiello's chapter "Blends" (of ''Extra-grammatical Morphology in English: Abbreviations, Blends, Reduplicatives, and Related Phenomena'', Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2013) 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.'')

Morphological classification

Morphologically, 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 Elisa Mattiello's chapter "Blends" (of ''Extra-grammatical Morphology in English: Abbreviations, Blends, Reduplicatives, and Related Phenomena'', Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2013) 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'' + ''digit'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 blends where 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; in this instance, ''light'' is the head, while "porta-" is attributive. 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:
* ( 'hint') + ( 'light') ( 'traffic light')
* ( 'tower') + ( 'light') ( 'lighthouse')
* Mishnaic Hebrew: ( 'push') + Biblical Hebrew: ( 'dig') ( 'bulldozer')
* 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