Analysing Blends

Scientific Essay from the year 2008 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics grade: 20 University of Marburg language: English abstract: You see its like a portmanteau there are two meanings packed up into one word(Carroll 2002:186). That is what Humpty Dumpty told Alice about a poem wherewords were mixed together out of other words. But not only in Lewis CarrollsThrough the Looking-Glass words like these occur. If you take a newspaper youwill find a lot of mixtures. One of the most famous of the last years are names likeBrangelina oder Bennifer where popular couples were shortened to one name.These names caught the attention of readers and led to an increasing usage. Somewords are part of our language and a division into the original parts becomes difficult.Take brunch as an example. Most people would describe it as a second breakfastbut would they think of a mixture of breakfast and lunch in the first place?Portmanteau words as Humpty Dumpty calls them in Linguistics are known asblends. It is a part of morphology which is often discussed because there are a lot ofcontradictions. The question arises if there are general rules which can be used toform blends and if there are major categories of blends.The paper will show the most important characteristics of blends and their structure.Furthermore it tries to find some answers to the above mentioned questions andproves or disproves generalisations. With the help of a survey the characteristicsshall be looked at in a critical way.