Blends. A creative means of word-formation

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1, Klagenfurt University (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Topics in Linguistics: Syntax and Morphology, language: English, abstract: Blending is anything but a new phenomenon in the English language. This is proven by the fact that the word brunch, which is one of the most widely known blends, was first recorded in 1896 - more than 100 years ago (Quinion 2014). However, only over the last couple of decades has blending become a very popular word-formation process. Today, in the English lexicon a large number of blends can be found which are no longer recognized as such since they have been in everyday use for quite a long time (Katamba 1994: 184). This can be explained by the fact that blends tend to be abbreviations in the beginning and, due to their word-like appearance, are lexicalized over time (Hadziahmetovic-Jurida 2006: 283). Although blending plays a significant role in terms of word-formation, it is hardly mentioned in monographs focusing on this particular aspect of morphology. This paper aims to explore the rules that determine the creation of blends as well as to have a closer look on two ways of categorizing them.