Blending. Part 2. Main varieties of blending

Blending is a universal principle of language units interaction for various languages and for their units having structural organization (words, morphological forms, set expressions, morphological paradigms and syntactic constructions). As a result of blending, new combined language units called blends are formed. Blends may develop from an unconscious misspeaking, or through stylistic intent and also as a result of historical alterations in language. There are eight varieties of blending: lexical overlap, phraseological overlap, morphological overlap, syntactic overlap, lexical clipping, phraseological clipping, morphological clipping and syntactic clipping. 1. Lexical overlap is an interaction of two words (АВ and аЬ), having identical sounds or complexes of sounds [А = a or А = Ь etc.]. Lexical overlap may be single, when the last part of the first word and the first part of the second word are identical in their phoneme composition (MoYagoda, streKOZel), and plural. In the latter case, two or several sounds or complexes of sounds are identical and placed in diverse parts of the blend (operaTyaVKa = operaTiVKa + TyaVKaf). 2. When phraseological overlap takes place, two set expressions having an identical word-component interact (smenit' gnev na milost' + sdat'sya na milost' pobeditelya = smenit' gnev NA MILOST'' pobeditelya). Phraseological overlap can be single only because of the small number of word-components in set expressions. Lexical overlap and phraseological overlap are used with a stylistic intent as a rule. 3. Morphological overlap appears when one or several forms of different words or of lexical-semantic variants of one word coincide. Morphological overlap may develop as a result of historical alterations in language or of unintentional misspeaking. 4. Syntactic overlap is regular between constructions with direct speech and indirect speech in colloquial style (On govorit, chto net, nel'zya = On govorit, chto nel'zya i On govorit: net, nel'zya). 5. Lexical clipping may develop when the first part of one word and the last part of another word are combined: [АВ + аЬ = АЬ] (moped). Lexical clipping sometimes appears between first parts of two words did not forming a combination of words: [АВ + аЬ = Аа]. In the latter case, blend are usually formed to name new artifacts (bester). 6. Phraseological clipping between two set expressions with similar senses consists in connecting of the first part of one expression to the last part of another expression. This variety of blending, as a rule, is used with a stylistic intent (Ne plyuy v kolodets, vyletit - ne poymaesh') and sometimes may cause a new language unit to appear (kanut' v Letu + otoyti v vechnost' = kanut' v vechnost'). 7. Morphological clipping takes place when one part of the grammatical paradigm of one word is substituted with elements of the grammatical paradigm of another word due to a speech error or a historical alteration in the language. 8. Syntactic clipping usually develops as a result of speech error when two synonymic syntactic constructions are mixed (Produktov dayut vprogolod' = Produktov dayut malo + zhit' vprogolod').

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