Cognitive constraints in English lexical blending

Abstract

The complex characteristics of lexical blending have long troubled mainstream word formation research to the extent that it has typically been considered a peripheral issue in linguistics. In recent years this has begun to change, and there is currently a growing body of evidence uncovering the intriguing nature of this word formation process. In the present study, underlying principles and usage-based aspects of lexical blends were examined. Analyses of derivatives of three matrix words, republican, liberal, and vegetarian, revealed the impact of three cognitive constraints on the use of lexical blends: schema transfer effects, neighborhood effects, and effects of the influence from morphological lexicalization. The first constraint fueled blend formation, while the other two displayed a hampering effect on the use of lexical blending. Furthermore, a study of the word class distribution in the datasets showed that there were significant differences in the grammar of lexical blending and compounding, respectively.

Lexical Shortening and Blending: An Innovative Word Formation Process in Arabic

“…Another line of research focused on lexical blending in English such as new lexical blends in English (Hosseinzadeh, 2014;Šomanová & Vogel, 2017); the innovation and adoption of English lexical blends (Connolly, 2013); merging as a way of forming lexical units in the modern English language (Orazbekova & Muldagalyieva (2017); a corpus-based analysis of new English blends such as glamma (glamour+grandma), eatertainment, irritainment, shoppertainment, from the splinter -tainment in entertainment (Elisa, 2019); English lexical blends on social media as crasins > cranberries+raisins, mocial > mobile+social, neature (neat+nature), Piloga > pilates+yoga, perthonality > personality+Perth (Cook, 2012); cognitive constraints in English lexical blending with a data collection methodology and an explanatory model (Kjellander, 2018); lexical blends and a reanalysis of morphemization (Frath & Hamm (2005); the automatic identification of source words in English lexical blends (Cook & Stevenson, 2010); a contrastive study of English and Thai compounding and lexical blending (Charernwiwatthanasri (2022); a contrastive analysis of French and English lexical blends (Renner, 2019; the phonological and orthographic constraints that shape blended words, such as preference for complex onsets, maintenance of stress placement, phonological and orthographic overlap and comparison with lexical neighbors to evaluate their phonotactic acceptability, orthographic transparency and interaction of many layers of representation (DiGirolamo, 2012) and others.…”