A study of blends in english = nghiên cứu từ hỗn hợp trong tiếng anh

Interested in lexicology, I really wish to do a study on word- formation.Blends are words formed by fusing parts of words together, e.g.. Aims of the study The study is about giving a ba

Vinh university foreign languages Department

-››› -Summary of graduation thesis

A study of blends in english

(nghiªn cøu tõ hçn hîp trong tiÕng anh)

To complete this study, I received help from several people

First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitute to M.AKieu Huyen Tram, my supervisor, who helped me very much to do this study

i

If not for her valuable and insighful guidance, comment and critism, my thesis would not have been completed

I am greatly indebted to all the teachers of Foreign Language Department for their comprehensive lessons as well as their encouragement,

especially M.A Vo Hong Minh who introduced me this topic: A study of

blends in English.

I also take this opportunity to express my special thanks to the students from Faculty of Foreign Languages and members of class 45E3 – English for their willingness to answer my questions and support information for me

Finally, I am immensely greatful to my family and my friend who facilitied for me to finish this thesis

Vinh, May 2009

Lª ThÞ §«ng KiÒu

Table of contents

Acknowledgement i

Table of contents ii

Part A: Introduction 1

1 Reasons for the study 1

2.Aims of the study 2

3 Scope of the study 2

ii

4 Methods of the study 2

5 Design of the study 3

Part B: Development 4

Chaeter I: Word and word formation 4

1 Word 4

1.1 The notion of word 4

1.2 Origin of word 5

1.3 Chacteristics of words 5

1.3.1 Uninterupted unit 5

1.3.2 Positional mobile 6

1.3.3 One or more morphemes 6

1.3.4 Occuring typically in the structure of phrase 6

1.3.5 Belong to a specific class or part of speech 7

1.4 Classification of words 7

1.4.1 According to the semantic aspect, words consist of content words and function words 7

1.4.2 In terms of the morphological structure 8

1.4.3 According to parts of speech(grammatical category) 8

1.4.4 In terms of the stylistic aspect of the language 8

2 Word formation 9

2.1 Definition of word formation 9

2.2 Types of word formation 9

2.2.1 Compounding 9

2.2.2 Derivation 10

2.2.3 Shortening 12

2.2.4 Conversion 13

2.2.5 Sound Imitation 13

2.2.6 Inflection 14

Chapter II: Blends in English 15

iii

1 Definition 15

2 History of blends 16

3 Determining source words of blends 17

3.1 Computational Models of Blends 18

3.1.1 Finding candidate pairs 19

3.1.2 Statiscal features 19

3.2 Case studies by Stefan 21

4 Types of blends 24

4.1 Algeo’s classification 24

4.1.1 Phonemic Overlap 24

4.1.2 Clipping 24

4.1.3 Phonemic Overlap and Clipping 25

4.2 I.V.Arnold’s classification 25

4.2.1 Additive type 25

4.2.2 Restrictive type 25

5 Formation 26

5.1 Formation 26

5.1.1 The beginning of one word is added to the end of other word 26

5.1.2 Blends can be formed by mixing multiple sounds from two component words, mostly preserving their order 26

5.1.3 Both components contain a common sequence of sounds 26

5.1.4 We can combine the beginnings of two words to form a blend 27

6 A survey on popularity of blend formation 27

Chapter III: Usages of blends in English 29

3.1 Blends for baby names 29

3.2 Blends in website 29

3.3 Blends in biology 30

3.4 Blends of different languages 30

3.5 Blends used for exercise regimes 30

iv

3.6 The media, advertising and shown businesses 31

3.7 Politics and The economy 31

3.8 Science and technology 32

3.9 Blends in literature 32

3.10 Blends of famous people 32

Part C: Conclusion 33

References 34

Appendix 35

v

Part A: introduction

1 Reasons for the study

Nowadays, English is considered the most popular language in theworld Therefore, learning English has become a required task to manypeople How to do the task well? That question has always been pondered byboth language teachers and learners

When acquiring a foreign language, like building a house, we need tothink firstly of material No doubt, the material of a language is itsvocabulary Forming the study of this dimension (one of the three main dedmentions of language), lexicology is theoretically useful in linguistics andpractically useful in foreign language teaching

Interested in lexicology, I really wish to do a study on word- formation.Blends are words formed by fusing parts of words together, e.g

"brunch" is blend of "breakfast" and "lunch", or "motel" is from "motor" and

"hotel" That is quite a new field to do a study on This thesis has been titled

as “Blends in English and some applications” due to the following reasons:

Firstly, Blend words are a new phenomenon in English and havebecome popular in this century They can be created by using parts of words

to fuse together They make lexicon get richer By studying this topic, wehope to make a list of blends and understand English word-formation byblending

Secondly, blends have been applied widely now They are used as babynames, in trade mark, literature, advertising…Lewis Carroll was well-knownfor this type

Thirdly, blends are a very interesting but difficult topic When studying

it, we have met many difficulties of material and documents It is really a bigchallenge but also, it is a chance for me to put our knowledge and capacityinto play

Finally, the reason why this subject is chosen for the study is derivedfrom our own interest We would like to list blend words in English, studythem in definition, types and formation and give some application By thatway, our vocabulary stock would be enriched

2 Aims of the study

The study is about giving a basic knowledge of word, word – formationand particularly blends in English

Therefore, the first aim of the study is to help English learners improveknowledge of English word-formation and English blend words

The second aim is to help the learning and teaching of blends

The third is to distinguish blends from compounds, abbreviation…The fourth aim is to help readers identify original words of blends.The final is to satisfy the author’s interest in blends We have done thestudy with our great pleasure Therefore, we would like to share our interestwith all those who are attracted by this term

3 Scope of the study.

The study only focus on blends in English

The study tries to find the answer to the following research questions:What is blend? How is it formed? What are its types? And what fields is itapplied?

4 Methods of the study

In order to gain the given aims, the study is based on some methods:The study refers to foreign publications to set up the theoreticalbackground

The main method is listing blend words and classifying them based ontheir formation

Also some additional methods are used in each step of the study are:

- Searching, reading and reviewing books, materials and references

related to the study on the process of the studying

- Collecting blend words

- Giving application of blends

5 Design of the study

The study consists of three main parts:

Part A is Introduction This part is divided into: reasons for the study,aims, scope, methods and organization of the study

Part B is Development This is the main and focused one of the study

It refers to three chapters

Chapter I: Background knowledge This chapter provides all conceptsrelated to the study

Chapter II: Blends in English This is the main section of the study.Chapter II: is about Applications of Blends

Part C is Conclusion

The part “Conclusion” expresses a brief overview on the achievements

of the thesis and some suggestions for further studies

The next pages of the thesis are References with list of materialsources

The last is an Appendix of blend words

Part B: Development

Chapter I word and word formation

1 Word

1.1 The notion of word

It is difficult to show a theoretical definition of word Up to now, therehave been many concepts of words All of them are relative and they don’tcontain all factors considered as word in language Linguists hope to give ageneral definition of word for all languages but until now it is impossible.L.Serba said that word in different languages is different and there may not

be any notion of word generally

What a word is relies on which domain you are interested in:

- Words distinguished from each other by their pronunciation arephonological words

- Words identified by grammatical variation are word – form orgrammatical words: preposition, article, conjunction

- Words identified as items of meaning are lexemes or lexical words:nouns, verbs, adjectives

- Words distinguished from each other by their spelling areorthographic words

According to Howard Jackson and Etienne Ze' Amelia: “Lexical words

are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs They have fairly independent

meanings and may be meaningful even in isolation??? or in a series…classes

of lexical words contain hundreds or even thousands of member and they form open classes".

(Words, meaning, and vocabulary: 50)

In my opinion, a word is a unit of form and content, and an independentunit of language to form a sentence by its self

A word may be made up of smaller meaningful morphemes

For examples:

- Useful = use + full

- Bookish = book + ish

The word English comes from the name of three main Germanic tribeswhich invaded in the British Isles during the fifth and the sixth centuries: TheAngles, The Jutes and The Saxon The three tribes probably spoke mutuallyintelligible dialects and the language of the country as a whole seems to havebeen known as English from this period (Old English).Thus, we often refer tothis early form of English as Angle-Saxon or Old English

During seventh century, the name of the country was Angle or Anglia(name of the king of Angles) The name became Engle in Old English and thename of language was referred to as English At the beginning of the tenthcentury, the word Ungallant did not appear and later England was used

1.3 Characteristics of words

1.3.1 Uninterrupted unit

According to Howard Jackson (Words, meanings, and vocabulary:

50): the word is an uninterrupted unit

When elements are added to a word to modify its meaning, they arenever included within that word That are interested in the internal stability

of the word( structure of morpheme) However, we can add affixes to word

Affixes are prefixes and suffixes Prefixes are added to at the beginning

of word and suffixes added at the end of word.

Préfixes are un, mi , mis , il

Examples: misunderstand, unaware

Suffixes are able, ation , err , or,

Examples: drinkable, visitor, speaker

1.3.2 Positional mobile

The word can be positionally mobile A word may have differentpositions in the structure of a sentence

1.3.3 One or more morphemes

Morphemes are the smallest meaningful language units that constitutewords or parts of words A word consists of one or more than onemorphemes If a word includes one morpheme only we can not break downsmaller meaningful units

Examples: leg, look, bird

If a word consists of more than one morpheme, they may be eithercomplex or compound words

Complex words may be broken down into one free form and one ormore bound form

Free form stands alone as independent word

+ girls = girl (free form) + s (bound)+ worked = work (free) + ed (bound)Compound words include more than one free morpheme

+ birthday = birth (free) + day (free)+ studentcard = student (free) + card (free)

1.3.4 Occurring typically in the structure of phrase

Word is the smallest meaningful unit to form sentence Morphemes areused to build words, words to build phrases, phrases to build clauses andclauses to build sentences

1.3.5 Belong to a specific class or part of speech

An important characteristic of each word is that it should belong to aspecial word class or part of speech

Quick et all (1985: 67) distinguished the following classes:

- Close classes: prepositions, pronouns, determiners, conjunctions…

- Open classes: nouns, adjectives, verbs adverbs…

- Lesser categories: numerals, interjections,

- A small number of words of unique: the partial not and the infinitivemarker to

Examples:

+ Nouns : dog, land, bag,…

+ Verbs: speak, tell, think…

+ Adverbs: quickly, slowly…

+ Adjectives: long, bad, easy…

- Function words (Grammatical words): are the words whose meaningsmainly denote the grammatical function of the words in the sentence Theyare articles, prepositions and interjections Function words have been referred

to as being close class words because it is not so easy as to think of new ones

to be added to them They are of a relatively small and permanent set They

are stable.

Examples:

+ Articles: the, an, a+ Preposition: to, in, on, of…

“Julie is reading a novel”

(Graduation thesis – Hoang Thi Hang: 50)

1.4.2 In terms of the morphological structure

Depending on the morphological structure, words can be classifiedinto:

+ Simple words: consist of a free morpheme with or without aninflectional morpheme

E.g.: cat, speaker, book, instrument…

+ Derived words or complex words: include either or free root or boundroot with derivational morpheme

E.g.: singer, helpful, boyish…

+ Compound words: contain at least two free morphemes with orwithout derivational morphemes

E.g.: greenhouse, birthday, schoolboy…

1.4.3 According to parts of speech (grammatical category)

Relying on parts of speech, words are grouped into nouns, verbs, adverbs Adjectives, determiners, conjunction

1.4.4 In terms of the stylistic aspect of the language

Words consist of three main types:

* Informal words:

- Colloquial words: the colloquial category includes words theabbreviate for informal effect: agin (against), picky (biscuit), brills (brilliant)

(Words, meaning and vocabulary - Howard Jackson: 139)

Similar items involve coalescence and abbreviation:

+ pupa = cup of tea

+ drinno = don’t know

- Slang words:

+ barney: noisy quarrel+ bigwig: important person+ bloc: person

+ chunter: mutter, grumble…

- Dialectal: words are popular in a local

- Vulgarisms: express action or habit

* Formal words: means of speaking appropriately about bodilyfunctions and other matters that are not normally mentioned in public

- Learned/bookish words

- Archaistic/poetic words: associated with legal texts: hereinafter;hereunder; wherein; whosever …

- Technical terms or professional terminology: Occident, orient…

- Non – assimilated foreign words:

* Neutral words: neither formal nor informal

2.2 Types of word formation

2.2.1 Compounding

Compounding forms a word out of two or more root morphemes Inother words, compounding is the process of joining two or more wordstogether The words are called compounds or compound words Compoundword is a combination of two or more words joined together with or without a

In linguistics:

Compounds can be either native or borrowed

Native English roots are typically free morphemes, which meancompounds are made out of independent words that can occur by themselves

E.g.: mailman, mail carrier, fireplace…

Compounds are written in various ways in English

- with a space between elements:

E.g.: fire hydrant, school leaver, arm chair

- with a hyphen between the elements

E.g.:

Lip – service, teach – in, queen – bee, pick – pocket,

- Simply with the two roots run together without separation:

E.g.: Blackmail, football, birthday, hotdog,

Compounds formed in English from Latin and Greek morpheme:

E.g.: photographic; introgenic

And many thousands of other classical words

Some compounds are from two rhyme words

+ lovely – dovely + chiller – killer

According to Evelyn Hatch and Cheryl Brown, "The most common

compounds are two nouns combined to create a meaning which differs from that of each of its parts as in fire engine or toot brush".

(Vocabulary, semantic and language education)

2.2.2 Derivation

Derivation is the creation of words by modification of a root withoutthe addition of other roots Often the effect is a change in part of speech

Following Howard Jackson et all (2000):"Derivation is lexical process

which actually forms a new word out of an existing one by the addition of

derivation affix".

Derivation is the process by which a new word is built from a stem

The derived word may have a different meaning in comparison with original

word, and may even be in a different grammatical than undelivered word

Derivation includes affixation( suffixation or preffixation )

Affixation is the addition of one or more affixes to a root as in the wordderivation itself This process is called affixation, a term which covers bothpurification and suffixation

Preffixation : unlucky, non – sensitive , disagree,…

Suffixation: happy happiness

Book bookish

Short shorter

Harm harmful

Suffixation normally determines or governs the word's part of speech.

They change the meaning of the word basically and completely Derivationalaffixes can not change the meaning or parts of speech of the word

E.g.:

- wind (n) ® windy (ad)

- rain(v) ® rainy(ad)

- length(n) ® lengthen (v)

- happy(adj ) ® happily (adv)

When co-occurring with the infections, derivational affixes are closer

to the stem , inflections are outer

E.g.: relationship = relate + action + ship

(derivation) (inflection)

Shortening = short + en + ing

(derivation) ( inflection)

2.2.3 Shortening (Abbreviation /Contraction)

According to Nguyen Tat Truong (2000), Shortening is also a very

productive way of building word in English New words formed by

shortening Shortening is specially productive in colloquial speeches and

advertisements

In principle:

Shortening is the way of creating a new form from a word or a phrase

by leaving out a part or some parts without the change of meaning or wordclass of the word

E.g.: + USA, WTO , BBC,

+ UN: the United Nation

+ EEC: European Economic Community

+ VOA : Voice of America

- Acronyms: initializes which are pronouns as single words

+ (aero)plane; (motor)car+ math(emetic ); (victory)- day+ (in)flu (enza ) ; (re)fridge(aerator )

+ pub(lic house); pop(lunar music)

- Verb ® noun: + to drop ® a dope out

+ to go ® a go

- Adjective ® noun: + rich ® the rich

+ poor ® the poor

- Noun ® verb: + lecture ® to lecture

+ function ® to function

- Adjective ® verb: + black ® blacken

+ short ® shortens

2.3.5 Sound Imitation

Sound Imitation is the way to form words by imitating sounds produced

by actions, things and so on This is also called phonetically motivation

- Imitate sounds produced by actions

+ animals: cuckoo,…

+ movement of water: flush, splash …+ man’ s actions : giggle , murmur , clinks, bang…

+ animal’s sounds : mew, moo, cackle…

- Back derivation (deaffixation ): Building new words by subtractingthe suffix from the existing words

+ air – conditioner ® air – condition

+ tape – recorder ® tape - record

- Sound and stress interchange

+ food ® feed

+ life ® live

+ record ® record

2.3.5 Inflection

According to Howard Jackson et al (2000), "Inflection is a general

grammatical process which combines words and inflectional affixes to build alternative grammatical form of words".

Inflectional affixes fit inflection paradigms which apply to the language

as a whole, they do not change the basic meaning or part speech of the stem.They typically indicate syntactic or semantic relation between different words

in a sentence and always occur at the end of a word

E.g.:

+ boy boys boy’s boys’

+ small smaller smallest+ talk talks told told talking

Chapter II: Blends in English

1 Definition

Nowadays, when we learn English, sometimes we meet some wordssuch as smog, brunch, motel, which have become popular in English They

are examples of blends.

Lewis Carroll called blends portmanteau words They are words ormorphemes that fuse two or more words or parts of words to give a combined

or loaded meaning The term "portmanteau" refers to a word formed bycombining both sounds and meaning from two or more words For examples,

"spork" from 'spoon" and 'fork"; "animatronics" from "animated" and

"electronics"

Blends have become parts of our everyday lexicon Therefore, studyingblends has proven to be one of the most useful ways for us to understand.There are many expression ways to characterize blends We will show somedefinitions of it as follows

In Linguistics:

Blends deal with the action of abridging and then combining various lexemes to form a new word However, the process of defining which words are true blends and which are not is more complicated The difficulty comes

in determining which parts of a new word are recoverable.

(http:// Blend-wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

According to Evelyn Hatch and Cheryl Brown (Vocabulary,

semantics, and language education- Evelyn Hatch and Cheryl Brown:211)

New words can also be created by two or more other words Forexamples, brunch came from the blend of breakfast and lunch: flurry fromflutter and hurry and smog from smoke and fog

Arnold says: "Blends may be defined as formations that combine two

words and include the letters or sounds they have in common as a connecting element" (p.141)

These definitions all have the point when they show that blend is aword formed from parts of two words They have often proposed as likelysources of lexical innovations However, it is difficult to find blends inEnglish

- broccoli + cauliflower = brocoflower

- camera + recorder = camcorder

- education + entertainment = edutainment

- information + commercial = infomercial

It is hard to identify certainly the words that have originated from suchblends but in many languages, there are words that have suddenly appearedwith no known sources that suspected of result from such slips of tongue

2 History of blends

According toPaul(inwebsite:www.cs.toronto.edu/pcook/ Cook

stevenson2007.pdf), earliest blending is the process by which two synonyms

or otherwise related forms of expression come simultaneously into

consciousness such that neither of them alone is activated but a new form arises in which elements of the one mix together with elements of the other

Blending is common in sound symbolic or phonosemantic words Slim

and flimsy are typical The sound symbolic “sly” (narrow, thin) as in slit,slither, slim, slice and frail as in whimsy, flimsy are combined

Some blends were common during renaissance period

For examples:

+ crash: a blend of craze and crash+ twirl: a blend of swirl and twist/ twine+ twiddle: a blend of twirl and fiddleThere are some pre- Lewis Carroll examples of blending in English.Gerrymander from 1811 was formed out of the man Massachusetts governorElbridge Gerry and salamander

Some words appeared pre – war such as agitprop; COM intern ; motel;brunch And more recently, there was the formation of new words likeCineplex , blaxploitation

From website “http:www.worldwidewords.org.articles/blend Htm”,