How Much Do You Gain and Lose in Blending?
How Much Do You Gain and Lose in Blending?

Summary/Abstract: This paper aims mainly at the theoretical issues related to the language economy with regard to lexical blending. We present the preliminary notions related to blends and their structure, focusing on English and Slovak. Our observations resulted in a different perception of the structural types, though they are the cornerstone of the formation of blends. The given structural types cannot be considered unambiguous. The linguistic reality proves that they are not satisfactory anymore, since blends are significantly unpredictable. That is why we discuss several aspects dealing with language economy and how blends can be formed not only positively, but also negatively. In other words, those blends which are too obvious, as well as those that are rather difficult to decipher, depending on the preservation and/or omission of the source words used. Of course, the above mostly depends on their categorisation within the structural types, but from this perspective, the categorisation is not always clear. The perception of (un)recognisable blends certainly exceeds the framework of linguistics, since blends are widely used, for example, in advertisements. In addition, we also address the extent of English influence on Slovak regarding blending, as well as some viewpoints on anglicisms. This is unquestionably a significant factor which may lead to change. In this respect, the theoretical notion of blending in English was adopted on the Slovak word-formation system. Finally, we present several examples analysing lexical blends in terms of proper or rather improper formation. However, it is necessary to emphasise that it is not possible to explicitly state whether a blend is structurally well-formed or not. That highly depends on other aspects, such as intention, stylistic criteria, communicative features, etc. Nevertheless, we believe that this study could make a contribution to the rather specific domain of linguistics, which is indeed productive and popular.

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