Juxtapositional compounding

III. Syntactico-morphological word-building

Blending (telescopy)

Blending is a special type of compounding by means of merging (сливать, соединять) parts of words into one new word. This category of word-formation is a development which has linguistic value of its own in various languages, the tendency towards shortness has become most active in recent times, in present-day English, particularly. Familiar examples of English blend-words (telescoped words, hybrid words, blends, „portmanteaux words”) are: slanguage (slang+language), brunch (breakfast+lunch), drunch (drinks+lunch), smog (smoke+fog), advecture (advertising+architecture), automagical (automatic+magical), cosplay (costume+play), dancercise (dancer+exercise), smaze (smoke+haze = легкий туман), etc. Cf.: Russian рженица (рожь+пшеница), French franglais (français+anglais), German Krad (Kraft+Rad). It seems practical to distinguish the following groups of blends:

1) coining the new word from the initial elements of one word and the final elements of another, e.g.: bash (bang = ударить, хлопнуть + smash = разбивать вдребезги), flurry (fly + hurry), joince (jump + bounce = скакать), hustle (hurry + bustle = торопиться), shimmer (shine + glimmer = мерцать), Oxbridge(Oxford + Cambridge), motel (motor + hotel), advertorials (advertising + editorials = редакционый материал), etc.

2) coining a new word by combining one notional word and the final element of another word, e.g. Manglish (man + English), radiotrician (radio + electrician), uraniumaire (uranium + millionare), newt (new + recruit [ ] = новобранец, призывник), pulltician (pull+ politician), nixonomics (Nixon + economics), dopelomat (dope + diplomat), etc.

3) coining a new word by combining the initial elements of one word with a notional word, e.g.: telejournalist (television + journalist), legislady (legislative + lady), mobus (motor + bus), bascart (basket + cart), etc.

Blending or telescopy involves different lexico-grammatical categories (nouns: macon (mutton + bacon), adjectives: mangy (mean + stingy), verbs: flurry (fly + hurry), adverbs: posilutely (positively + absolutely).

Such coinages are often formed with a playful or humorous intent and have a stylistic status. They can convey various shades of emotive colouring (irony or mockery).

Compounding can be defined as the formation of a lexical unit of two or more stems. One should distinguish between morphological, syntactical and juxtapositional (or neutral) composition.

The juxtapositional way of component joining is joining them by means of simply placing them side by side. A.I. Smirnitsky called it „neutral” for it is partly morphological, and partly syntactical. It is morphological for it affects the morphological structure of the word forming a two-morpheme or three-morpheme word out of separate stems; it is syntactical for the stems stand to each other in the same grammatical relation as words in the phrase.

The term „juxtapositional” seems more exact for it characterizes the manner of composition – placing the stems side-by-side: a) in the same syntactical order (e.g. ash-tray, shirt-collar, gas-mask); b) in apposition (e.g. girl-friend, man-servant, lady-companion); c) in reversed order (e.g. shoe-making – making shoes; lady-killer – kill ladies; pitch-dark – as dark as pitch; sun-burnt – burnt by the sun, short-lived – that lived short, etc.).

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