What is blending in word formation

Blendings
(blends,
fusions or
portmanteau
words) may
be defined as formation that combine two words and include the
letters or sounds they have in common as a connecting element:

bio (logical) +
(electro)nic →
bionic

wash +
(caf)eteria →
washeteria

sk(ateboard) +
(s)urfing →
skurflng

slim+gymnastics →
slimnastics;

miserable+flimsy →
mimsy;

gallop+triumph →
galumph;

new+utopia →
neutopia

UA. банківський
+ автомат
→ банкомат

The process of formation is
also called telescoping.
The analysis into immediate constituents is
helpful in
so far as it permits the definition of a blend as a word with the
first constituent represented by a stem whose final part may be
missing, and the second constituent by a stem of which the initial
part is missing. The second constituent when used in a series of
similar blends may turn into a suffix. A new suffix -on
is, for
instance, well under way in such terms as nylon,
rayon, formed
from the final element of cotton.

Depending
upon the prototype phrases with which they can be correlated two
types of blends can be distinguished. One may be termed additive,
the second restrictive.
Both involve the sliding together not only of sound but of meaning as
well. Yet the semantic relations which are at work are different.

The
additive type,
is transformable into a phrase consisting of the respective complete
stems combined by the conjunction and:

smoke
and
fog
→ smog − a
mixture of smoke and fog.

The elements may be
synonymous, belong to the same semantic field or at least be members
of the same lexico-grammatical class of words:

French+English
→ Frenglish;

smoke+haze
→ smaze;

Panjab+Afghania+Kashmir+Singh+Baluchistan
→ Pakistan;

breakfast
and
lunch
→ brunch

transmitter
and
receiver
→ transceiver

The
restrictive type
is transformable into an attributive phrase where the
first element serves as modifier of the second:

cine(matographic
pano) rama
→ cinerama.

medical
care → medicare

positive
electron → positron

television
broadcast → telecast

An
interesting variation of the same type is presented by cases of
superposition,
formed by pairs of words having similar clusters of sounds which seem
to provoke blending:

motorists’
hotel →motel;

sham
bamboo (imitation
bamboo) →
shamboo;

slang
+language
→ slanguage;

spiced ham → spam.

Blends,
although not very numerous altogether, seem to be on the rise,
especially in terminology and also in trade advertisements:
Reaganomics»
Irangate, blackspiloitation, workaholic, foodoholic, scanorama etc..

7.2. Back-formation.

Back-formation
(also
called reversion)
is a term borrowed from
diachronic linguistics. It denotes the derivation of new words by
subtracting a real or supposed affix from existing words through
misinterpretation of their structure.

The earliest examples of
this type of word-building are the verb to
beg that
was made from the French borrowing beggar,
to burgle from
burglar, to
cobble from
cobbler. In
all these cases the verb was made from the noun by subtracting what
was mistakenly associated with the English suffix -er.
The
pattern of the type to
work —
worker was
firmly established in the subconscious of English-speaking people at
the time when these formations appeared, and it was taken for granted
that any noun denoting profession or occupation is certain to have a
corresponding verb of the same root. So, in the case of the verbs to
beg, to burgle, to cobble the
process was reversed: instead of a noun made from a verb by
affixation (as in
painter from
to paint),
a verb was
produced from a noun by subtraction. That is why this type of
word-building received the name of back-formation
or
reversion.

Later examples of
back-formation are to butle
from
butler, to
baby-sit from
baby-sitter,
to force-land from
forced
landing, to blood-transfuse from
blood-transfuing.

Back formation is mostly
active in compound verbs, and is combined with word-composition. The
basis of this type of word-building are compound words and
word-combinations having verbal nouns, gerunds, participles or other
derivative nouns as their second component (rush-development,
finger-printing, well-wisher).
These compounds and word-combinations are wrongly considered to be
formed from compound verbs which are nonexistent in reality. This
gives a rise to such verbs as; to
rush-develop, to finger-print, to well-wish.

Structural
changes taking place in back-formation became possible because of
semantic changes that preceded them. The change of meaning resulted
in demotivation, and this paved the way for phonic changes, i.e.
assimilation, loss of sound and the like, which in their turn led to
morphemic alternations that became meaningful. Semantic changes often
influence the morphological structure by modifying the relations
between stems and derivational affixes. Structural changes, in their
turn, depend on the combined effect of demotivation and analogy
conditioned by a higher frequency of occurrence of the pattern that
serves as model. Provided all other conditions are equal, words
following less frequent structural patterns are readily subjected to
changes on the analogy of more frequent patterns.

The
very high frequency of the pattern verb
stem+-er
(or
its equivalents) is a matter of common knowledge.

Back-formation
may be also based on the analogy of inflectional forms as testified
by the singular nouns pea
and
cherry.
Pea (the
plural of which is peas
and
also pease)
is
from ME pese<OE
pise, peose<Lat pisa, pl.
of pesum.
The
ending -s
being
the most frequent mark of the plural in English, English speakers
thought that sweet
peas(e) was
a plural and turned the combination peas(e)
soup into
pea
soup. Cherry is
from OFr cerise,
and
the -se
was
dropped for exactly the same reason.

The
most productive type of back-formation in
present-day English is
derivation of
verbs
from
compounds that have either -er
or
-ing
as
their last element:

thought-reading
n
→ thought-reader
n
→ thought-read
v;

air-conditioning
n
→ air-conditioner
n
→
air-condition
v;

turbo-supercharger
n.
→
turbo-supercharge
v

Other
examples of back-formations from compounds
are the verbs baby-sit,
beachcomb, house-break, house-clean, house-keep,
red-bait, tape-record etc.

The
semantic relationship between the prototype and the derivative is
regular. Baby-sit,
for
example, means to act or become employed as a baby-sitter, that is to
take care of children for short periods of time while the parents are
away from home.

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Last Update: Jan 03, 2023

This is a question our experts keep getting from time to time. Now, we have got the complete detailed explanation and answer for everyone, who is interested!

Asked by: Mrs. Mireya Sauer V

Score: 4.2/5
(69 votes)

Blending is one of the many ways new words are made in English. It refers to joining the beginning of one word and the end of another to make a new word with a new meaning. Smog, from smoke and fog, and brunch, from breakfast and lunch, are examples of blends. … Learners can also invent new blend words.

What is blending and its types?

There are several types of common blends. … In one type it’s the beginning of one word and the end of another word that are combined together. Examples include: brunch = breakfast + lunch; simulcast = simultaneous + broadcast; and smog = smoke + fog.

What is the word for blending words?

Portmanteau word, also called blend, a word that results from blending two or more words, or parts of words, such that the portmanteau word expresses some combination of the meaning of its parts.

What are the examples of word formation?

Word formation in English

What are the 3 word formation?

There are four main kinds of word formation: prefixes, suffixes, conversion and compounds.

36 related questions found

Blending is a type of word formation in which two or more words are merged into one so that the blended constituents are either clipped, or partially overlap. An example of a typical blend is brunch, in which the beginning of the word breakfast is joined with the ending of the word lunch.

What are the examples of blending?

Examples

What is a blending sentence?

Blended sentences allow certain juvenile offenders to receive both juvenile and adult sentences. In some cases, the blended sentence may offer the offender the opportunity to avoid the adult sentence if he or she complies completely with the juvenile sentence, which is served first.

How do you form a blended word?

Blend words are usually made up of the beginning of the first word and the end of the second word (like brunch). We can also use the beginnings of two words, e.g. email from “electronic + mail”.

Is brunch a blending?

A “portmanteau,” or blended word, is a word made by combining parts of two or more words. For example, the portmanteau “brunch” is a combination of “breakfast” and “lunch,” and “email” is a combination of “electronic” and “mail.” Sometimes more than two words are combined.

How do you use blend in a sentence?

Blend sentence example

1. He’d never blend into the shadows again.
2. His expression was a blend of question and concern.
3. It is generally, as exported, a blend made Malaga.
4. Her humble appearance made it easy for her to just blend into the crowd.
5. Even so, Alex was a blend of excitement and security for her.

What does blend words mean?

A blend (sometimes blend word, lexical blend, portmanteau or portmanteau word) is a word formed from parts of two or more other words.

How do you blend words in English?

So how do you make a blended word?

1. Combining the end of a word with the beginning of another one. > Ex. Smoke + fog = smog.
2. Combining the beginning of 2 words. > Ex. Cybernetic + organism = cyborg.
3. Overlapping, which means that 2 words are combined though a common sequence of sounds.

What’s a beginning blend?

A consonant blend is when two or more consonants are blended together, but each sound may be heard in the blend. The most common beginning consonant blends include: bl, br, cl, cr, dr, fr, tr, fl, gl, gr, pl, pr, sl, sm, sp and st. Blends can also occur at the end of words as in the word “last”.

People in general have no difficulty coping the new words. We can very quickly understand a new word in our language (a neologism) and accept the use of different forms of that new word. This ability must derive in part from the fact that there is a lot of regularity in the word-formation process in our language.

In some aspects the study of the processes whereby new words come into being language like English seems relatively straightforward. This apparent simplicity however masks a number of controversial issues. Despite the disagreement of scholars in the area, there don´t seem to be a regular process involved.

These processes have been at work in the language for some time and many words in daily use today were, at one time, considered barbaric misuses of the language.

What is Coinage?

Coinage is a common process of word-formation in English and it is the invention of totally new terms. The most typical sources are invented trade names for one company´s product which become general terms (without initial capital letters) for any version of that product.

For example: aspirin, nylon, zipper and the more recent examples kleenex, teflon.

This words tend to become everyday words in our language.

What is Borrowing?

Borrowing is one of the most common sources of getting new words in English. That is the taking over of words from other languages. Throughout history the English language has adopted a vast number of loan words from other languages. For example:

• Alcohol (Arabic)
• Boss (Dutch)
• Croissant (French)
• Piano (Italian)
• Pretzel (German)
• Robot (Czech)
• Zebra (Bantu)

Etc…

A special type of borrowing is the loan translation or calque. In this process, there is a direct translation of the elements of a word into the borrowing language. For example: Superman, Loan Translation of Übermensch, German.

What is Compounding?

The combining process of words is technically known as compounding, which is very common in English and German. Obvious English examples would be:

• Bookcase
• Fingerprint
• Sunburn
• Wallpaper
• Textbook
• Wastebasket
• Waterbed

What is Blending?

The combining separate forms to produce a single new term, is also present in the process of blending. Blending, takes only the beginning of one word and joining it to the end of the other word.  For instance, if you wish to refer to the combined effects of smoke and fog, there´s the term smog. The recent phenomenon of fund rising on television that feels like a marathon, is typically called a telethon, and if you´re extremely crazy about video, you may be called a videot.

What is Clipping?

Clipping is the process in which the element of reduction which is noticeable in blending is even more apparent. This occurs when a word of more than one syllable is reduced to a shorter form, often in casual speech. For example, the term gasoline is still in use but the term gas, the clipped form is used more frequently. Examples

• Chem.
• Gym
• Math
• Prof
• Typo

What is Backformation?

Backformation is a very specialized type of reduction process. Typically a word of one type, usually noun, is reduced to form another word of a different type, usually verb. A good example of backformation is the process whereby the noun television first came into ude and then the term televise is created form it.

More examples:

• Donation – Donate
• Option – Opt
• Emotion – Emote
• Enthusiasm – Enthuse
• Babysit – Babysitter

What is Conversion?

Conversion is a change in the function of a word, as for example, when a noun comes to be used as a verb without any reduction. Other labels of this very common process are “category change” and “functional shift”. A number of nouns such as paper, butter, bottle, vacation and so on, can via the process of conversion come to be used as verbs as in the following examples:

• My brother is papering my bedroom.
• Did you buttered this toast?
• We bottled the home brew last night.

What is an Acronym?

Some new words known as acronyms are formed with the initial letters of a set of other words. Examples:

• Compact Disk – CD
• Video Cassette Recorder – VCR
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration – NASA
• The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – UNESCO
• Personal Identification Number –PIN
• Women against rape – WAR

What is Derivation?

Derivation is the most common word formation process and it accomplished by means of a large number of small bits of the English language which are not usually given separate listings in dictionaries. These small bits are called affixes. Examples:

• Unhappy
• Misrepresent
• Prejudge
• Joyful
• Careless
• Happiness

Prefixes and Suffixes

In the preceding group of words, it should be obvious that some affixes have to be added to the beginning of a word. These are called prefixes: unreliable. The other affix forms are called suffixes and are added at the end of the word: foolishness.

Infixes

One of the characteristics of English words is that any modifications to them occur at the beginning or the end; mix can have something added at the beginning re-mix or at the end, mixes, mixer, but never in the middle, called infixes.

Activities – WORDS AND WORD FORMATION PROCESSES

Activity 1

Identify the word formation process involved in the following sentences:

1. My little cousin wants to be a footballer
2. Rebecca parties every weekend
3. I will have a croissant for breakfast.
4. Does somebody know where is my bra?
5. My family is vacationing in New Zealand
6. I will babysit my little sister this weekend
7. Would you give me your blackberry PIN?
8. She seems really unhappy about her parents’ decision.
9. I always have kleenex in my car.

10.  A carjacking was reported this evening.

(To check your answers, please go to home and check the link: Activities Keyword)

*You may require checking other sources