engleski

An analysis of phonological features of lexical blends

Blending is a very common and highly researched process that occurs in the everyday use of English (Cannon 1986: 725). It has many different purposes– it is humorous, sometimes used in slang, but mostly, due to their humorous nature, they are used for commercial purposes (Cannon 2000: 956). By analysing a list of 150 blends collected from various sources, this thesis presents the results to questions how the variables like syllable number, sonority levels, normalized frequency and contribution percentages of source words correlate with each other and influence the formation of blends. The results show that the fusion point occurs at the first syllable for first source words and at the second syllable for the second source word and mostly between diphthongs and vowels. Also, the contribution percentage of source words increases, as the normalized frequency of source words increases. And lastly, the overall contribution of source words decreases, as the number of syllables increases.

lexical blends, word-formation, fusion point, sonority level, normalized frequency, syllable number, contribution percentage

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