Renner, Vincent (2023). Blending.

In Peter Ackema, Sabrina Bendjaballah, Eulàlia Bonet & Antonio Fábregas (eds),
The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Morphology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Preprint version, 3 October 2022

Blending

Vincent Renner
Université Lumière Lyon 2, France

1 Introduction

Blending is generally considered a marginal process of word-formation. It is very unevenly attested

and recognized in the languages of the world, and seemingly unknown in a majority of them. Its study
has been fraught with a number of difficulties, including the fact that its very definition and boundaries
are still subject to debate, both intra- and crosslinguistically. In this chapter, a broad bird's-eye view is
adopted in order to bring a plurality of neighboring types and subtypes into the discussion.
Morphological outputs which may be termed portmanteau words, clipped compounds, clipping
compounds, stub compounds, complex clippings or syllabic acronyms in the literature are thus
included. Like compounding, blending involves the morphological combination of two (or more) words
into one. Its essential defining feature, which crucially sets it apart from compounding from a formal
standpoint, is its non-concatenative nature. Adopting the symbolization in common use in the
literature, which uses the letters A and B to refer to the two (initial and final) fragments of the first
input word and the letters C and D to similarly represent the two fragments of the second input word,
some English examples of blending of the AD type may be given:1

(1) a. xylo.phone (A.B) + ma.rimba (C.D) > xylo.rimba (A.D)

b. sm.oke (A.B) + h.aze (C.D) > sm.aze (A.D)

A linear symbolization of the formal operation is standard, especially when one or more segments
shared by the two input words appear medially in the blend, as is for instance the case for ēs in Latvian
mēstule or aft in English crafternoon:

(2) a. mēslu 'manure' + vēstule 'letter' > mēstule 'junk email' (Veisbergs 2018, 140)

b. craft + afternoon > crafternoon

Segment overlap is a salient feature of blending in several languages, like English and French for
example (see e.g. Renner 2019, 33–34). The shared material is typically positioned word-medially in
blended outputs, as seen in (2), but when the shared segments are discontinuous and/or occur word-
initially or word-finally in at least one of the inputs, a representation aligning them vertically may be
preferable in order to better enhance the structural similarities between inputs and output:

1
The blends which are used as examples throughout this entry have not been referenced when they were found
in online dictionaries or on other language-related websites.
(3) a. English Spanglish

Slot 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Input word 1 s p a n i s h
Input word 2 e n g l i s h
Blended output s p a n g l i s h

b. Spanish tabléfono 'phablet'

Slot 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Input word 1 t a b l e t a
Input word 2 t e l é f o n o
Blended output t a b l é f o n o

Input and output forms are here only given in their graphemic form, but the symbolization can also
be expressed phonemically. Some differences between the two levels of analysis may occur; this is
indicated topically in the sections to follow.

2 Definition

Blending is an operation that combines two or more input words together, as is also the case for
compounding and initialization.2 The three operations can be distinguished in terms of relative
subtraction of the various input words: there is no subtraction, but concatenation, in compounding
while there is moderate subtraction in blending and extreme subtraction in initialization, which
corresponds to the assembling of monosegmental word-initial fragments:

(4) a. English graphics + interface + format > GIF

b. French plan + épargne 'savings' + logement 'housing' > PEL 'home ownership savings plan'

The borderline area between blending and initialization includes all outputs composed of a mix of
syllabic and monosegmental fragments:

(5) a. English tactical + air + navigation > tacan

b. Russian glavnoe 'main' + upravlenie 'directorate' + lagereĭ 'camps' > gulag

The formal delimitation between blending and compounding is more straightforward as the former
operation entails the breaking of the material integrity of at least one input word, as in the following
cases of minimal subtraction:

(6) a. English acquihire < acquire + hire

b. French Arianespace (the name of a launch service provider) < Ariane (the name of a carrier
rocket) + espace 'space'

These two examples also illustrate that, formally, blending is not always simply a phoneme-based
operation. The pronunciation of acquihire, /ˈækwiˌhaɪər/, features a new phoneme, /i/, and the

2
The term initialization is here used to refer to all combinations of word-initial graphemes, whether the outputs
have an alphabetic pronunciation, as in NBA, an orthoepic pronunciation, as in NATO, or a mixed alphabetic-
cum-orthoepic pronunciation, as in JPEG.
pronunciation of Arianespace, /aʀjanɛspas/, is identical to that of a putative concatenation of the two
input words (material integrity is maintained phonemically, but not graphemically). The borderline
between compounding and blending may, however, not always be obvious, at least in the descriptions
from the literature, as pointed out by Bauer (2001, 704): "there are languages in which compounding
is, or may be, accompanied by a certain amount of phonological merger of the two elements. [...] the
result may be rather more like what, in the morphology of English, are described as blends". Consider
the following examples:

(7) a. Basque bekorotz 'cow dung' < behi 'cow' + korotz 'excrement' (Coyos 2004, 68)

b. East Cree nâpemiskw 'male beaver' < nâpew 'male' + amiskw 'beaver' (MacKenzie and Junker
2004, 112)

c. Ilocano balailaw 'lighthouse' < balay 'house' + silaw 'light' (Rubino 1997, 115)

If such subtractive phenomena are regular and predictable, a compounding analysis may be favored,
but if it is not the case, a blending analysis seems more appropriate.
To sum up this brief categorial overview, blending can thus be seen as the process of creating new
complex words by combining two (or more) words into one without respecting the principle of strict
concatenation and without operating extreme subtraction from the right edge on all input forms. It is
defined as the non-concatenative process of word combination that minimally involves some
subtraction on one input word (see (6) above) and maximally allows for the extreme subtraction of all
but one of its input words (see (5) above). Included in the category of blends are those haplologic
ABCD outputs which contain all the individual segments of their different inputs. In this case,
subtraction results from an operation of overlapping of the B and C word edges and the shared
segments are said to be "ambimorphemic" (Piñeros 1998), as in (2b) above and in the following
examples:

(8) a. Modern Hebrew maxazémer 'musical' < maxazé 'play' + zémer 'song' (Dekel 2014, 57)

b. Basque sagardo 'apple wine' < sagar 'apple' + ardo 'wine'

c. German Kurlaub 'health spa vacation' < Kur 'health cure' + Urlaub 'vacation'

d. Japanese bakappuru 'lovebirds' < baka 'stupid' + kappuru 'couple'

Some scholars further restrict the definition of blending. Dressler (2000, 5), for instance, confines
the category to "paradigmatic contaminations", i.e. outputs like smog (from smoke and fog), whose
inputs are in a non-hierarchical (i.e. coordinative) relation. Arcodia and Montermini (2012, 93) limit it
to subtractive constructs whose inputs "have one or more segments in common, and for which the
common string serves as the conjunction point". Fábregas and Scalise (2012, 130) consider that
blending involves some subtractive operation on all input words. The most commonly held view is,
however, that such features should not be definitional and may instead be seen as possible
prototypical features of the category.
Other scholars like Bat-El (2006, 66), Gries (2012, 146) and Bauer (2021, 478) distinguish — both
categorially and terminologically – between blends in a narrow sense (i.e. AD, ABD, and ACD
constructs) and clipped compounds / complex clippings / clipping compounds (i.e. AC constructs) on
the justified grounds that they tend to be correlated with different formal properties (see Section 5.2
below). Such an approach, however, papers over the problem of classifying and labelling the other
attested types such as the BD, ACB, and ACDB types (see (17c) and (19a,c)) or the outputs containing
medial fragments, as in (18) (are they blends, or clipped compounds, or something else?). In contrast
with the inclination to increase the number of specific terms to name the various formal types (see
e.g. Makri-Morel 2015), blend is here viewed and used as a general term applying to a broad and
multifarious formal category. This seems to better dovetail with the prototype-based approach to
categorization which is sometimes explicitly assumed in the literature (see e.g. Thornton 1993, 143;
Gries 2006, 536; Brdar-Szabó and Brdar 2008, 175; Bauer 2012, 19).

3 Crosslinguistic distribution

In their overview of word-formation in a sample of 55 typologically diverse languages, Štekauer,

Valera, and Körtvélyessy (2012) note that blending is attested in about a quarter of the languages
under study (p. 309) and that the process is mainly a feature of Indo-European languages (p. 132). In
a subsequent review of 73 languages of Europe (in a broad geographical sense), Körtvélyessy,
Štekauer, Genči, and Zimmermann (2018, 344) indicate that it is attested in slightly more than half of
the languages in their sample and it is again shown to be mostly concentrated in the Indo-European
language family.3 Even if present, blending is always considered to have a fairly marginal status and it
is usually not presented as a remarkable feature of the word-formation system of individual languages.
English and Indonesian may, however, stand as two noticeable outliers (see, respectively, Faiß (2004,
1678) and Sneddon (2003, 145)).
The accelerating global dominance of English in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries
has led to ever-increasing language contact. The English-induced spread of the process of blending —
its new availability or increased frequency of use — is undoubtedly the most prominent crosslinguistic
feature of the contemporary era. This can be best illustrated by the current situation in the European
countries of the former Eastern Bloc. The recent word-formation literature documents that blending
was hardly available until the end of the twentieth century and that the presence of novel blends in
the concerned languages has been induced by the new inclination towards English that followed the
end of Communist rule (see e.g. Stamenov 2015 for Bulgarian, Veisbergs 2018 for Latvian, Konieczna
2012 for Polish, Lalić-Krstin 2008 for Serbian, Böhmerová 2010 for Slovak, and Filonik 2015 and
Karpilovska 2016 for Ukrainian).
Contact-induced change in word-formation structure can be hypothesized to develop as follows,
with illustrative examples taken from Slovene (Sicherl 2018) and French. A number of blends
containing input fragments which are transparent in the recipient language are borrowed and gain
wide currency. They may be non-adapted blends, as in (9), or adapted blends, as in (10). What matters
is that, in both cases, the two fragments of the blend are graphemically identical to fragments of the
putative input words in the recipient language:

(9) a. Slovene bankster < bankir 'banker' + gangster

b. French cultivar < cultivée 'cultivated' + variété 'variety'

(10) a. Slovene sekstanje 'sexting' < seks 'sex' + tekstanje 'texting'

b. French webinaire 'webinar' < web + séminaire 'seminar'

This insight into morphological structure turns these borrowings into lexical precursors which
gradually prime speaker-hearers for structural change, i.e. which pave the way for the incipient or
heightened use of "homegrown" blending, as in (11):

(11) a. Slovene kočerja 'afternoon meal' < kosilo 'lunch' + čerja 'dinner'

b. French infox 'fake news' < info 'news' + intox 'disinformation'

3
Pavol Štekauer, email message to author, January 15, 2021.
 A remarkable class of English-induced homegrown blends is made of items coined by structural
calquing, i.e. items which do not have inputs or input fragments that segmentally match those of their
English analogues, but which share a common word-formation structure. This can be illustrated by the
following coinages, whose appearance may incidentally have been eased by the fact that their input
words open the possibility of segment overlap at the switch point, i.e. the point where the two input
words meet in a blend (this is the case for (12b-e)):

(12) a. Serbian biljolada 'vegelate' < biljna 'vegetable' + čokolada 'chocolate' (Halupka-Rešetar and
Lalić-Krstin 2009, 116)

b. German herrklären 'to mansplain' < Herr 'Mister' + erklären 'to explain'

c. Hungarian Csalagút 'Chunnel' < Csatorna 'Channel' + alagút 'tunnel'

d. Icelandic hrútskýring 'mansplaining' < hrútur 'ram' + útskýring 'explanation'

e. Swedish hemester 'staycation' < hem 'home' + semester 'vacation'

Especially salient in this regard are a number of complex concepts which are repeatedly encoded by
blends in a variety of languages and are assumed to have been originally named in English. This hints
at a crosslinguistic iconicity-driven proclivity to encode some hybrid conceptual combinations — like
SPOON-FORK HYBRID in (13), SMOKE-FOG HYBRID in (14), or MALE LION / FEMALE TIGER HYBRID in (15) — through
hybrid (i.e. blended) constructs (see Section 4.2 below for a discussion):

(13) a. English spork < spoon + fork

b. Korean phokhalak < phokhu 'fork' + swutkalak 'spoon'4 (Ahn 2014, 23)

c. German Göffel < Gabel 'fork' + Löffel 'spoon'

d. Icelandic skaffall < skeið 'spoon' + gaffall 'fork'

e. Romanian furculingură < furculiță 'fork' + lingură 'spoon'

f. Spanish cuchador < cuchara 'spoon' + tenedor 'fork'

(14) a. English smog < smoke + fog

b. Modern Hebrew ʻarpíax < ʻarafél 'fog' + píax 'soot' (Schwarzwald 2013, 42)

c. Estonian sudu < suits 'smoke' + udu 'fog'

d. Indonesian asbut < asap 'smoke' + kabut 'fog'

e. Spanish neblumo < niebla 'fog' + humo 'smoke'

(15) a. English liger < lion + tiger

b. Javanese sican < singa 'lion' + macan 'tiger'

4
Korean words are here transcribed according to the Yale romanization system.
 c. Turkish kaslan < kaplan 'tiger' + aslan 'lion'

All these examples testify that English can fairly safely be assumed to be playing a significant role in
the diffusion of blending in a large number of the world's languages.

4 Taxonomic overview

4.1 Qualitative perspective

A wide variety of types is attested both formally and semantically. Blends may be nouns, adjectives,
verbs, or adverbs and result from various combinations of lexical categories:

(16) a. Tagalog askalN 'stray dog' < asoN 'dog' + kalyeN 'street'

b. Dutch dokaN 'darkroom' < donkereADJ 'dark' + kamerN 'room'

c. French tonicardiaqueADJ 'cardiotonic' < toniqueADJ 'tonic' + cardiaqueADJ 'cardiac'

d. Italian esentasseADJ 'tax-exempt' < esenteADJ 'exempt' + tasseN 'taxes'

e. English gazunderV < gazumpV + underADV

f. English skyjackV < skyN + hijackV

g. English automagicallyADV < automaticallyADV + magicallyADV

The basic formal types are made of word-edge fragments — AC, AD, and BD when both input words
are subject to subtraction and ABD and ACD when one input word remains intact in the blend:

(17) a. AC: Korean tikha 'digicam' < ticithel 'digital' + khameyla 'camera' (Shi 2019, 186)

Finnish luha 'folding spoon-fork combo' < lusikka 'spoon' + haarukka 'fork'

b. AD: German jein 'yes and no' < ja 'yes' + nein 'no'

Spanish veroño 'Indian summer' < verano 'summer' + otoño 'autumn'

c. BD: Tagalog haytó 'fossil' < buhay 'life' + bató 'stone'

Indonesian menwa 'student reserve corps' < resimen 'regiment' + mahasiswa

'student'

d. ABD: Slovak vlakuška 'train stewardess' < vlak 'train' + letuška 'air stewardess' (Ivanová
and Ološtiak 2016, 2910)

Portuguese showmício 'concert-cum-rally' < show 'concert' + comício 'political rally'

e. ACD: Irish Breatimeacht 'Brexit' < Breatain 'Britain' + imeacht 'departure'

Norwegian elbil 'electric car' < elektrisk 'electric' + bil 'car'

Some types featuring medial input fragments are also attested:

(18) a. English Norplant < levonorgestrel + implant

b. Indonesian tilang 'traffic ticket' < bukti 'proof' + pelanggaran 'violation'

The structure of a blend is made more complex in case of fragment discontinuity (19a), segment
overlap (19b), or a mix of the two (19c):

(19) a. English rifampicin < rifamycin + piperazine (ACB type)

b. Tagalog Tsinoy 'Chinese Filipino' < Tsino 'Chinese' + Pinoy 'Filipino'

c. English adorkable < adorable + dork (ACDB type)

The process of blending also complexifies when more than two input words are involved:

(20) a. English ortanique < orange + tangerine + unique

b. English Brockton (the name of a new municipality in Ontario) < Brant + Greenock + Walkerton
(the names of the three merged municipalities)

c. French chaucidou 'advisory bike lane' < chaussée 'pavement' + circulation 'traffic' + douce
'bike-friendly'

d. Indonesian Sishankamrata 'People's Total Defense and Security System (military doctrine)' <
sistem 'system' + pertahanan 'defense' + keamanan 'security' + rakyat 'people' + semesta
'universal'

e. Indonesian Jabodetabekpunjur 'Jakarta metropolitan area' < Jakarta + Bogor + Depok +

Tangerang + Bekasi + Puncak + Cianjur (all place-names)

The size of a blended output can vary from a maximum equal to the total number of syllables of the
different input words, as in (21a-b), to a minimum of one syllable, as in (21c-d), leaving ample room
for variation between these two extremes, and leading in some cases to the co-institutionalization of
outputs of different sizes, as illustrated in (22):

(21) a. English vocoder < voice + coder

b. French bancassurance < banque 'bank' + assurance 'insurance'

c. English bit < binary + digit

d. Italian colf 'maid' < collaboratrice 'collaborator' + familiare 'family'

(22) a. English alphabetic + numeric > alphameric; alphanumeric

b. English plum + apricot > pluot; plumcot; aprium; apriplum

 The variety in the semantic interpretation of blends is similar to that found in compounds, with the
same possibilities of coordinative and subordinative interpretation for nouns, adjectives, and verbs —
respectively in (23) and (24) —, as well as of figurative interpretations through metaphor or
metonymy, as illustrated in (25):

(23) a. Bulgarian horemagN 'hotel-cum-restaurant-cum-store' < hotelN + restorantN 'restaurant' +

magazinN 'store' (Stamenov 2015, 177)

b. Spanish conspiranoicoADJ 'conspiratory-cum-paranoid' < conspirativoADJ 'conspiratory' +

paranoicoADJ 'paranoid'

c. English pootleV < poodleV + tootleV

(24) a. Japanese pasokonN 'PC' < pāsonaruADJ 'personal' + konpyūtāN 'computer'

b. English hangryADJ < hungryADJ + angryADJ

c. French divulgâcherV 'to spoil' < divulguerV 'to divulge' + gâcherV 'to ruin'

(25) a. Icelandic tölva 'computer' < tala 'number' + völva 'seeress'

b. Portuguese macarronese 'mayo pasta salad' < macarrão 'pasta' + maionese 'mayonnaise'

c. French élinvar 'elinvar' < élasticité 'elasticity' + invariable

d. English altazimuth < altitude + azimuth

e. English Manhattanhenge < Manhattan + Stonehenge

This broad consonance between compounds and blends comes, however, with a notable restriction,
namely that the position of the semantic head is not as strictly fixed in blending as it is in compounding.
Right-headed compounding is for instance the norm in English, but some left-headed blends are
attested, as in (26); similarly, left-headed compounding is the norm in French, but many right-headed
blends can be found, as in (27):

(26) a. brony < bro + pony

b. newzak < news + Muzak

c. rockoon < rocket + balloon

(27) a. bistronomie 'bistro-style gastronomy' < bistrot 'bistro' + gastronomie 'gastronomy'

b. cécifoot 'blind soccer' < cécité 'blindness' + foot 'soccer'

c. souplex 'duplex apartment with a basement lower level' < sous-sol 'basement' + duplex
'duplex apartment'

The violation of the norm of head placement can in part be explained by a preference for maximizing
both segment overlap and the recognizability of the inputs in the output form. In (26a-b) and (27a),
respecting both the norm of head placement and the preference for overlapping would lead to coining
outputs which are shorter in syllabic length than their longer inputs — respectively °po (< po(ny) +
(br)o), °Mews (< Muz(ak) + (n)ews), and °gastrot (< gastro(nomie) + (bi)strot). Fragment ordering,
however, seems to maintain a degree of freedom in some cases. Atypical are those blends whose
outputs result from the compacting of preexisting multiword units (see Section 5.2 below for a
discussion). In this case, fragment ordering is not free and the position of the head fragment reflects
that of the head word in the preexisting multiword unit (a compound or phrase). In English, such
blends may be left-headed, as in (28a), or right-headed, as in (28b):

(28) a. memcon < memorandum of conversation

b. capex < capital expenditure

In conclusion, it emerges from the examined data that formal variation in blending is very wide
because of the many possibilities of fragmentation, positioning, and overlapping of the various input
words, which is in stark contrast with what is possible in compounding, which follows the basic word-
formation technique of concatenation. From a semantic standpoint, variation is also quite substantial,
but it is apparently limited to those types which are also found in compounding.

4.2 Quantitative perspective

The variation described in the previous section does not imply an even distribution of the different
types and this section focuses on a number of salient quantitative tendencies. The discussion is
primarily based on English because of the wealth of data and studies on this language and the relative
paucity of quantitative approaches to blending in other languages.
Formally, blending typically involves inputs and outputs which belong to the same lexical category
— overwhelmingly that of nouns — and blends predominantly follow one of the following subtractive
patterns: AD, ABD, ACD, and AC. A general inclination to maximize the recognition of the input words
of a blend can explain this preference for patterns retaining a full input word and/or word-edge
fragments. This is in line with the findings of the processing literature (see e.g. Johnson and Eisler
2012) which indicate that, during sentence reading, exterior letters (i.e. first and last letters) are more
critical than interior letters in word recognition, and the fact that the first letter is itself more crucial
than the last letter may also explain in part the relative dispreference for the BD pattern.
The leading (i.e. most frequent) subtractive pattern can vary from one language to another: it is
claimed to be AD in English (Arndt-Lappe and Plag 2013, 540–541; Beliaeva 2014a, 35)5 and Korean
(Shi 2019, 164), ACD in French (Renner 2019, 33), Italian (Thornton 2004, 571), and Polish (Konieczna
2012, 63), and AC in Indonesian (Zaim 2017, 259). Different studies on the same language can also
lead to divergent results, as illustrated by the comparative analysis of some available English data:
Arndt-Lappe and Plag (2013, 540, 546)'s data support the view that AD is the leading and the majority
type, Renner (2019, 33)'s data that AD is the leading type, but not the majority type, Kjellander (2019,
18)'s data that ABD is the leading type, but not the majority type, and Renwick and Renner (2019, 4)'s
data that ABD is both the leading and the majority type. These divergences show that it may be crucial
to make distinctions between various genetic types as the different origins of the four datasets —
experimentally induced items for Arndt-Lappe and Plag, dictionary-sanctioned items for Renner, items
retrieved semi-automatically from a news corpus for Kjellander, and nonce items from the Simpsons
TV show for Renwick and Renner — are likely to explain part of the discrepancies. This genetically
induced variation can also be tied to functional considerations. It is for example expected that humor-
driven nonce blending, as in English Nostradumbass, from Nostradamus and dumbass (Renwick and

5
These authors use the symbol AD to refer to different supertypes — the conflation of all structural types
starting in A and ending in D for Arndt-Lappe and Plag, that of AD and ABD (but not ACD or ABCD) for Beliaeva.
In this chapter, AD is only used to refer to the specific pattern of splicing an initial and a final input fragment, as
illustrated in (17b).
Renner 2019, 8), and compaction-driven terminological blending, as in English bit (see (21c)) or balun,
from balancing unit, should tend to differ from a structural standpoint. In the former case, it may be
optimal to maximize input recognizability and thus select inputs that share as many structural features
as possible, while in the latter case, such considerations are downgraded in favor of brevity, with input
fragments that are mono- or infrasyllabic.
Regarding output size, the structure of blends may be constrained by the principle of size
inheritance. This is for instance the case in English, Korean, and Japanese, three languages in which an
overwhelming majority of some formal types of blends are equal in size to one of their inputs,
especially their right-hand ones (see Renner (2019, 42) and Renwick and Renner (2019, 7) for English
A{B|C|∅}D6 units, Ahn (2014, 24) for Korean A{B|C|∅}D units, and Kubozono (1990, 16) for Japanese
AD units). Size inheritance is not, however, a universal property of these types: in French for instance,
about half of the A{B|C|∅}D blends in Renner (2019, 43)'s dataset differ in size from either input,
which is to be correlated with the preference for ACD blending in this language. The size of AC blends
is not hereditary (it is irrespective of the different sizes of the input words): outputs are preferably
disyllabic as each input typically contributes a monosyllabic fragment to the blend (see Renner (2019,
42) for French and English, Molinsky (1973, 35) for Russian, and Labrune (2007, 175) and Irwin (2016,
175–176) for Japanese7). This nonhereditary form of subtraction is in line with the functional primacy
of compacting and brevity in AC constructs (see Section 5.2 below).
A majority of semantic interpretations are of the subordinative type, but coordinative blends
represent a sizable minority of constructs — about 15% in Korean (Ahn 2014, 22–23), 20% in French
(Renner 2019, 38), 25% in Ukrainian (Winters 2017, 108), and between about 20 and 30% in English
(Beliaeva 2014a, 43; Renner 2019, 38). This is highly significant if compared to coordinative
compounds, which for instance amount to only about 2% of all compounds in English (Berg 2009, 134).
This conspicuous presence of coordinative units can partly be explained by an onomasiological
preference to encode hybrid concepts (in the broadest sense) through blended outputs, in a
manifestation of morphosemantic iconicity, a hybrid form mimicking a hybrid concept. Blending has
become a popular word-formation strategy to name genetic hybrids in English, as illustrated in (29),
and in some other languages as well, probably in part under the influence of language contact, as
illustrated in (30):

(29) a. limequat < lime + kumquat

b. Morab < Morgan + Arab

c. puggle < pug + beagle

d. poetaz < Narcissus poeticus + Narcissus tazetta

(30) a. French casseille 'jostaberry' < cassis 'blackcurrant' + groseille 'redcurrant'

b. Italian mapo 'tangelo' < mandarino 'mandarin' + pompelmo 'grapefruit'

c. Polish pszenżyto 'triticale' < pszenica 'wheat' + żyto 'rye'

d. Dutch zezel 'zonkey' < zebra + ezel 'donkey'

Blends also encode hybrid concepts referring to a variety of physical and abstract entities:

6
This symbol is used to refer to a supertype conflating ABD, ACD, and AD units.
7
In their mora-based approach to Japanese prosody, Labrune and Irwin both claim more specifically that the
input fragments are typically bimoraic and the outputs quadrimoraic.
(31) a. English nitrox < nitrogen + oxygen

b. English flumpet < flugelhorn + trumpet

c. English polocrosse < polo + lacrosse

d. Ukrainian ketčunéz 'fry sauce' < kétčup 'ketchup' + majonéz 'mayonnaise' (Winters 2017,
269)

e. Spanish whiscola 'whisky and Coke' < whisky + cola 'Coke'

f. Portuguese portunhol 'mixture of Portuguese and Spanish' < português 'Portuguese' +

espanhol 'Spanish'

In quantitative terms, the distribution between semantically left-headed and right-headed blends is
especially remarkable from a crosslinguistic standpoint. In English (Renner 2019, 39), Serbian
(Halupka-Rešetar and Lalić-Krstin 2009, 122–123), and Ukrainian (Winters 2017, 110), there is clearly
predominant right-hand headedness, and left-headed blends only account for a relatively small
minority of constructs. The situation is, however, strikingly different in some other languages: in
French, the position of the head does not seem to be semantically constrained as there are about as
many left-headed as right-headed units in Renner (2019, 39)'s dataset; similarly, in Modern Hebrew
Bat-El (1996, 288) claims that the order of the elements is not semantically, but phonologically
conditioned, and her dataset of subordinative blends (pp. 318–321) includes about an equal number
of left-headed and right-headed constructs. It may not be a coincidence that compounds are
semantically right-headed in English, Serbian, and Ukrainian and left-headed in both French and
Modern Hebrew, but fine-grained quantitative analyses in a wider variety of languages are still needed
to validate and fully understand such crosslinguistic correlations and contrasts.

5 Current debates

Divergent views on a number of subjects can be found in the blending literature and this section
addresses two central issues: the grammatical or extragrammatical status of outputs of blending and
the inclusion or exclusion of AC constructs from the category of blends.

5.1 The extragrammaticality of blends

The concept of extragrammatical morphology can be traced back to Dressler and Merlini Barbaresi
(1994, 36) and defined as the domain outside of morphological grammar that includes all
morphological operations that violate basic principles of this grammar and are rather characterized
by consciousness (p. 38) and relative irregularity and unpredictability (pp. 39–40). If there seems to
be general agreement in the word-formation literature that blends are, in Miller (2014, 240)'s terms,
"totally conscious manipulations", the assessment of their regular or irregular character leads to two
opposing views. On the basis of quantitative insight into formal aspects of blend formation, some
morphologists — e.g. Bauer, Lieber, and Plag (2013, 460); Beliaeva (2014b, 46); Plag (2018, 124) —
consider that, because blended outputs are typically highly constrained and thus predictable from a
probabilistic standpoint, blending belongs within morphological grammar. Other morphologists — e.g.
Ronneberger-Sibold (2010, 202–205); Mattiello (2013, 55–58, 129–131) —, however, stress that, even
though some structural preferences may be identified, outputs cannot be predicted in every detail (as
is generally the case in regular morphology) and they follow Dressler and Merlini Barbaresi in
considering that blends violate a number of principles of morphological grammar, leading
Ronneberger-Sibold (2012, 116) to state that "blending is extragrammatical compounding".
 It should be noted that the blending of two input words may lead to co-attested outputs (see (22))
and that virtually any phonotactically viable output is to be regarded as licit. This crucially
demonstrates that outputs of blending are impervious to (un)grammaticality judgments, as
underlined by Ronneberger-Sibold (2015, 485–486). Other forms of transgression also indicate that
blending does not always follow the grammar of compounding, which is the default morphological
operation of word combination. Some categorial combinations which are illicit in compounding are
allowed in blending: this is for example the case of noun-adjective, adjective-noun, noun-verb, and
verb-noun nominal constructs in Modern Hebrew — while only noun-noun combinations are allowed
in nominal compounding (Bat-El 1996, 286–287) —, of noun-verb and verb-verb verbal constructs in
French, as in (32), and of anthroponyms in English, as in (33):

(32) a. cadonner 'give a present' < cadeau 'present' + donner 'give'

b. accumonceler 'accumulate' < accumuler 'accumulate' + amonceler 'accumulate'

(33) Javanka 'Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump as a power couple' < Jared + Ivanka

The unfixedness of the position of the semantic head, which has been discussed in Section 4 above,
can be seen as an additional feature of extragrammaticality, and so can the possible instability of
grammatical gender assignment, as illustrated in (34):

(34) a. French cavurneMASC or FEM 'urn vault' < caveauMASC 'vault' + urneFEM 'urn'
b. French canaroieMASC or FEM 'magpie goose' < canardMASC 'duck' + oieFEM 'goose'

In conclusion, the various linguistic traits adduced above point to the extragrammaticality of
blending, which is here apprehended as a non-scalar concept, but this does not mean that, from a
quantitative perspective, some of the features of blending may not be regular and predictable to a
more or less high degree (see Fradin, Montermini, and Plénat (2009, 34) for a similar view).

5.2 The taxonomic status of AC blends

Several studies have documented that the structural distinction between A{B|C|∅}D and AC blending
is probabilistically correlated with a number of other properties: if compared to A{B|C|∅}D units, AC
blends stand out as not manifesting size inheritance and as having a highly constrained — typically
disyllabic — output form (see Section 4.2 above), as displaying segment overlap at the switch point
less frequently (see Renner (2019, 34) for French and English), as having input words that do not show
as much overall segmental similarity (see Gries (2006, 550–554) for English), and as corresponding
more frequently to contractions of existing word combinations (see Beliaeva (2014a, 46) for English).
This last property is critical and has been underdiscussed in the blending literature. It goes back to the
distinction formalized by Algeo (1977, 56–62) between a syntagmatic blend, i.e. a "combination of two
forms that occur sequentially in the speech chain" (p. 56), and an associative blend, i.e. a combination
of two input words which "have been linked in the word-maker's mind" (p. 57) as they are not attested
to co-occur in discourse. This dichotomy is distinct from that between subordinative and coordinative
units as Algeo includes coordinative Hashbury (from Haight-Ashbury) in the class of syntagmatic
blends (p. 56) and a cross-tabulation of the two binary oppositions is possible, as exemplified by the
English blends in (35):

(35) a. syntagmatic and subordinative: moobs < man boobs

b. syntagmatic and coordinative: banjulele < banjo-ukulele

 c. associative and subordinative: wallyball < wall + volleyball

d. associative and coordinative: doohickey < doodad + hickey8

Algeo also underlines that "[a]lthough [syntagmatic blends] are usually classified as blends, [...] a
consistent taxonomy would regard them merely as contractions" (p. 56), pointing to the key contrast
between the two functions of blending (see Renner 2020, 8–9), i.e. the associative strategy of novel
naming and the syntagmatic strategy of compacted renaming. A consistent onomasiologically oriented
taxonomy thus ought to separate units of novel naming from units of compacted renaming rather
than AC constructs from A{B|C|∅}D constructs. This is because an AC(E) blend does not always
originate from a preexisting multiword unit, as illustrated in (36), and conversely because a number
of A{B|C|∅}D blends (and three-fragment constructs obtained by inner-edge subtraction) result from
the compacting of preexisting multiword units, as illustrated in (37):

(36) a. English parsec < parallax + second

b. English rawin < radar + wind

c. Swedish moped < motor + pedal

d. Spanish Bolpebra (the name of a municipality at the border junction of Bolivia, Peru, and
Brazil) < Bolivia + Perú 'Peru' + Brasil 'Brazil'

(37) a. Japanese gakukan 'student dormitory' < gakusei kaikan 'student + building' (Barešová and
Zawiszová 2014, 162)

b. English orature < oral literature

c. English parathormone < parathyroid hormone

d. Indonesian miras 'liquor' < minuman keras 'beverage + hard'

e. French pistolaser 'ray gun' < pistolet laser 'pistol + laser'

f. English quagma < quark-gluon plasma

g. Spanish Banesto (the name of a bank) < Banco Español de Crédito 'bank + Spanish + of +
credit'

This functional insight might, incidentally, be the key to explaining the contrast between the primacy
of AC blends in Indonesian and that of A{B|C|∅}D blends in the other languages under scrutiny in
Section 4.2 above — blending in Indonesian is predominantly a strategy of compacted renaming.
In sum, even though AC constructs seem to be overwhelmingly units of compacted renaming, their
exclusion from the category of blends — which is the view supported by e.g. Bat-El, Gries, and Bauer
(see Section 2 above) — does not appear to be justified on functional grounds. If the class of blends is
to be restricted to instances of novel naming, associative AC blends ought to be retained and
syntagmatic A{B|C|∅}D blends discarded. An inclusive, prototype-based approach to the formal
category is instead advocated here as the side-by-side comparison of adjacent and intertwined types

8
In the 14-billion-word iWeb corpus (Davies 2018), wallyball and doohickey occur respectively 102 and 687 times
while the bigrams wall(-)volleyball and doodad(-)hickey are unattested.
and subtypes is thought to be the best way to probe further into the intricacies of complex
morphological subtraction.

6 Conclusion

Blending is a fairly marginal process of word-formation with a noteworthy presence in a number of

Indo-European and Austronesian languages. Adopting a broad multilingual view of the phenomenon
foregrounds the existence of a vast array of formal patterns and a distribution of types and subtypes
that can substantially vary from one language to another. This, however, does not mean that some
marked tendencies do not appear crosslinguistically. Two prototypical formal-cum-functional
strategies of blend formation can be sketched: A{B|C|∅}D blending, which typically rests on glocal
formal similarity as blended outputs tend to adopt the size of one of their inputs (global similarity) and
to share one or more segments with both inputs (local similarity), leading to an enhanced
ingeniousness of outputs, which is optimal when it rests on a one-segment substitution, as in e.g.
Serbian čedovište 'monster child', from čedo 'child' and čudovište 'monster' (Halupka-Rešetar and
Lalić-Krstin 2009, 117); and AC blending, which typically consists in splicing together two monosyllabic
fragments with the aim of drastically reducing the size of a preexisting multiword unit, as in e.g. Dutch
minco 'inferiority complex', from minderwaardigheidscomplex.

Acknowledgments

I am very grateful to Eulàlia Bonet, Pierre Arnaud, Gordana Lalić-Krstin, and Julie Makri-Morel, whose
comments and suggestions have led to a substantially improved final version of this chapter. Any
errors or shortcomings are solely my own.

References

Ahn, Suzy. 2014. "Faithfulness Conflict in Korean Blends." University of Pennsylvania Working Papers
in Linguistics, 20, no. 1: 21–30.
Algeo, John. 1977. "Blends, a Structural and Systemic View." American Speech, 52, no. 1/2: 47–64.
DOI:10.2307/454719.
Arcodia, Giorgio Francesco, and Fabio Montermini. 2012. "Are Reduced Compounds Compounds?
Morphological and Prosodic Properties of Reduced Compounds in Russian and Mandarin
Chinese." In Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Lexical Blending, edited by Vincent Renner,
François Maniez, and Pierre J.L. Arnaud, 93–113. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
DOI:10.1515/9783110289572.93.
Arndt-Lappe, Sabine, and Ingo Plag. 2013. "The Role of Prosodic Structure in the Formation of English
Blends." English Language and Linguistics, 17, no. 3: 537–563.
DOI:10.1017/S1360674313000154.
Barešová, Ivona, and Halina Zawiszová. 2014. "Creativity and Innovation in Word Formation by
Japanese Young People." In Language Use and Linguistic Structure: Proceedings of the Olomouc
Linguistics Colloquium 2013, edited by Joseph Emonds and Markéta Janebová, 157–170.
Olomouc: Palacký University. DOI:10.5507/ff.14.24440606.11.
Bat-El, Outi. 1996. "Selecting the Best of the Worst: The Grammar of Hebrew Blends." Phonology, 13,
no. 3: 283–328. DOI:10.1017/S0952675700002657.
Bat-El, Outi. 2006. "Blend." In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., Vol. 2, edited by
Keith Brown, 66–70. Oxford: Elsevier. DOI:10.1016/B0-08-044854-2/00109-7.
Bauer, Laurie. 2001. "Compounding". In Language Typology and Language Universals: An
International Handbook, Vol. 1, edited by Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf
Oesterreicher, and Wolfgang Raible, 695–707. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Bauer, Laurie. 2012. "Blends: Core and Periphery." In Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Lexical
Blending, edited by Vincent Renner, François Maniez, and Pierre J.L. Arnaud, 11–22. Berlin: De
Gruyter Mouton. DOI:10.1515/9783110289572.11.
Bauer, Laurie. 2021. "Compounds and Minor Word-Formation Types." In The Handbook of English
Linguistics, 2nd ed., edited by Bas Aarts, April McMahon, and Lars Hinrichs, 463–482. Hoboken:
Wiley Blackwell. DOI:10.1002/9781119540618.ch23.
Bauer, Laurie, Rochelle Lieber, and Ingo Plag. 2013. The Oxford Reference Guide to English
Morphology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198747062.001.0001.
Beliaeva, Natalia. 2014a. "A Study of English Blends: From Structure to Meaning and Back." Word
Structure, 7, no. 1: 29–54. DOI:10.3366/word.2014.0055.
Beliaeva, Natalia. 2014b. Unpacking Contemporary English Blends: Morphological Structure, Meaning,
Processing. Ph.D. dissertation, Victoria University of Wellington.
Berg, Thomas. 2009. Structure in Language: A Dynamic Perspective. New York: Routledge.
DOI:10.4324/9780203890165.
Böhmerová, Ada. 2010. Blending as Lexical Amalgamation and its Onomatological and Lexicographical
Status in English and in Slovak. Bratislava: ŠEVT.
Brdar-Szabó, Rita, and Mario Brdar. 2008. "On the Marginality of Lexical Blending." Jezikoslovlje, 9, no.
1/2: 171–194.
Coyos, Jean-Baptiste. 2004. "Basque." In Le Nom Composé: Données sur Seize Langues, edited by
Pierre J.L. Arnaud, 47–70. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon.
Davies, Mark. 2018. The 14-billion-word iWeb corpus (2017). https://www.english-corpora.org/iWeb.
Dekel, Nurit. 2014. Colloquial Israeli Hebrew: A Corpus-Based Survey. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
DOI:10.1515/9783110364484.
Dressler, Wolfgang U. 2000. "Extragrammatical vs. Marginal Morphology." In Extragrammatical and
Marginal Morphology, edited by Ursula Doleschal and Anna M. Thornton, 1–10. Munich: Lincom
Europa.
Dressler, Wolfgang U., and Lavinia Merlini Barbaresi. 1994. Morphopragmatics: Diminutives and
Intensifiers in Italian, German, and Other Languages. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
DOI:10.1515/9783110877052.
Fábregas, Antonio, and Sergio Scalise. 2012. Morphology: From Data to Theories. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
Faiß, Klaus. 2004. "From Old English to Modern English." In Morphology: An International Handbook
on Inflection and Word-Formation, edited by Geert Booij, Christian Lehmann, Joachim Mugdan,
and Stavros Skopeteas, 1668–1680. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
DOI:10.1515/9783110172782.2.18.1668.
Filonik, Svitlana. 2015. "English and Ukrainian Blending Patterns in Contrast." Neologica, 9: 187–203.
DOI:10.15122/isbn.978-2-8124-4838-6.p.0187.
Fradin, Bernard, Fabio Montermini, and Marc Plénat. 2009. "Morphologie Grammaticale et
Extragrammaticale." In Aperçus de Morphologie du Français, edited by Bernard Fradin,
Françoise Kerleroux, and Marc Plénat, 21–45. Saint-Denis: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes.
Gries, Stefan Th. 2006. "Cognitive Determinants of Subtractive Word Formation: A Corpus-Based
Perspective." Cognitive Linguistics, 17, no. 4: 535–558. DOI:10.1515/COG.2006.017.
Gries, Stefan Th. 2012. "Quantitative Corpus Data on Blend Formation: Psycho- and Cognitive-
Linguistic Perspectives." In Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Lexical Blending, edited by Vincent
Renner, François Maniez, and Pierre J.L. Arnaud, 145–167. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
DOI:10.1515/9783110289572.145.
Halupka-Rešetar, Sabina, and Gordana Lalić-Krstin. 2009. "New Blends in Serbian: Typological and
Headedness-Related Issues." Annual Review of the Faculty of Philosophy, Novi Sad, 34: 115–
124.
Irwin, Mark. 2016. "The Morphology of English Loanwords." In Handbook of Japanese Lexicon and
Word Formation, edited by Taro Kageyama and Hideki Kishimoto, 161–197. Berlin: De Gruyter
Mouton. DOI:10.1515/9781614512097-009.
Ivanová, Martina, and Martin Ološtiak. 2016. "Slovak." In Word-Formation: An International Handbook
of the Languages of Europe, Vol. 4, edited by Peter O. Müller, Ingeborg Ohnheiser, Susan Olsen,
and Franz Rainer, 2892–2912. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI:10.1515/9783110379082-026.
Johnson, Rebecca L., and Morgan E. Eisler. 2012. "The Importance of the First and Last Letter in Words
during Sentence Reading." Acta Psychologica, 141, no. 3: 336–351.
DOI:10.1016/j.actpsy.2012.09.013.
Karpilovska, Ievgeniia. 2016. "Ukrainian." In Word-Formation: An International Handbook of the
Languages of Europe, Vol. 4, edited by Peter O. Müller, Ingeborg Ohnheiser, Susan Olsen, and
Franz Rainer, 2913–2931. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI:10.1515/9783110379082-027.
Kjellander, Daniel. 2019. "Gold Punning: Studying Multistable Meaning Structures Using a
Systematically Collected Set of Lexical Blends." Lexis, 14: 1–28. DOI:10.4000/lexis.3962.
Konieczna, Ewa. 2012. "Lexical Blending in Polish: A Result of the Internationalisation of Slavic
Languages." In Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Lexical Blending, edited by Vincent Renner,
François Maniez, and Pierre J.L. Arnaud, 51–73. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
DOI:10.1515/9783110289572.51.
Körtvélyessy, Lívia, Pavol Štekauer, Ján Genči, and Július Zimmermann. 2018. "Word-Formation in
European Languages." Word Structure, 11, no. 3: 313–358. DOI:10.3366/word.2018.0132.
Kubozono, Haruo. 1990. "Phonological Constraints on Blending in English as a Case for Phonology-
Morphology Interface." Yearbook of Morphology, 3: 1–20.
Labrune, Laurence. 2007. "Morphophonologie des Emprunts Abrégés en Japonais: Aspects
Prosodiques et Mélodiques." In Des Sons et des Sens: Données et Modèles en Phonologie et en
Morphologie, edited by Elisabeth Delais-Roussarie and Laurence Labrune, 173–198. Paris:
Lavoisier.
Lalić-Krstin, Gordana. 2008. "Portmanteau Animals and their Portmanteau Names in English and
Serbian." In ELLSSAC Proceedings, Vol. 1, edited by Katarina Rasulić and Ivana Trbojević
Milošević, 231–239. Belgrade: Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade.
MacKenzie, Marguerite, and Marie-Odile Junker. 2004. "Cri de l'Est." In Le Nom Composé: Données sur
Seize Langues, edited by Pierre J.L. Arnaud, 101–114. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon.
Makri-Morel, Julie. 2015. "Mots-Valises: Quand les Segments Communs se Font la Malle..." Neologica,
9: 61–79. DOI:10.15122/isbn.978-2-8124-4838-6.p.0061.
Mattiello, Elisa. 2013. Extra-Grammatical Morphology in English: Abbreviations, Blends,
Reduplicatives, and Related Phenomena. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
DOI:10.1515/9783110295399.
Miller, D. Gary. 2014. English Lexicogenesis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199689880.001.0001.
Molinsky, Steven J. 1973. Patterns of Ellipsis in Russian Noun Formations. The Hague: Mouton.
DOI:10.1515/9783110822182.
Piñeros, Carlos Eduardo. 1998. Prosodic Morphology in Spanish: Constraint Interaction in Word
Formation. Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University. DOI:10.7282/T3222SMR.
Plag, Ingo. 2018. Word-Formation in English, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
DOI:10.1017/9781316771402.
Renner, Vincent. 2019. "French and English Lexical Blends in Contrast." Languages in Contrast, 19, no.
1: 27–47. DOI:10.1075/lic.16020.ren.
Renner, Vincent. 2020. "An Ecosystem View of English Word-Formation." The Mental Lexicon, 15, no.
1: 4–20. DOI:10.1075/ml.00011.ren.
Renwick, Adam, and Vincent Renner. 2019. "New Lexical Blends in The Simpsons: A Formal Analysis of
English Nonce Formations and their French Translations." Lexis, 14: 1–16.
DOI:10.4000/lexis.3829.
Ronneberger-Sibold, Elke. 2010. "Word Creation: Definition – Function – Typology." In Variation and
Change in Morphology: Selected Papers from the 13th International Morphology Meeting,
Vienna, February 2008, edited by Franz Rainer, Wolfgang U. Dressler, Dieter Kastovsky, and
Hans Christian Luschützky, 201–216. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI:10.1075/cilt.310.11ron.
Ronneberger-Sibold, Elke. 2012. "Blending between Grammar and Universal Cognitive Principles:
Evidence from German, Farsi, and Chinese." In Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Lexical
Blending, edited by Vincent Renner, François Maniez, and Pierre J.L. Arnaud, 115–143. Berlin:
De Gruyter Mouton. DOI:10.1515/9783110289572.115.
Ronneberger-Sibold, Elke. 2015. "Word-Creation." In Word-Formation: An International Handbook of
the Languages of Europe, Vol. 1, edited by Peter O. Müller, Ingeborg Ohnheiser, Susan Olsen,
and Franz Rainer, 485–500. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI:10.1515/9783110246254-028.
Rubino, Carl. 1997. A Reference Grammar of Ilocano. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Santa
Barbara.
Schwarzwald, Ora R. 2013. "The Typology of Nonintegrated Words in Hebrew." SKASE Journal of
Theoretical Linguistics, 10, no. 1: 41–53.
Shi, Chung-Kon. 2019. "On some Properties of Blends in Korean Neologisms." Korean Linguistics, 85:
155–201. DOI:10.20405/kl.2019.11.85.155.
Sicherl, Eva. 2018. "English Influence on Word-Formational Production in Slovene: The Case of Lexical
Blending." Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 43, no. 2: 141–158.
DOI:10.2307/26621254.
Sneddon, James. 2003. The Indonesian Language: Its History and Role in Modern Society. Sidney:
University of New South Wales Press.
Stamenov, Christo. 2015. "Borrowing Word-Formation: -ing Suffixation and Blending in Bulgarian."
Sŭpostavitelno Ezikoznanie / Contrastive Linguistics, 40, no. 3: 163–197.
Štekauer, Pavol, Salvador Valera, and Lívia Körtvélyessy. 2012. Word-Formation in the World's
Languages: A Typological Survey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
DOI:10.1017/CBO9780511895005.
Thornton, Anna M. 1993. "Italian Blends." In Natural Morphology, Perspectives from the Nineties:
Selected Papers from the Workshop at the Fifth International Morphology Meeting, Krems, 4–9
July 1992, edited by Livia Tonelli and Wolfgang U. Dressler, 143–155. Padova: Unipress.
Thornton, Anna M. 2004. "Parole Macedonia." In La Formazione delle Parole in Italiano, edited by
Maria Grossmann and Franz Rainer, 567–571. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
DOI:10.1515/9783110934410.567.
Veisbergs, Andrejs. 2018. "Word-Formation Pattern Borrowing in Latvian." Baltic Journal of English
Language, Literature and Culture, 8: 129–146. DOI:10.22364/BJELLC.08.2018.09.
Winters, Svitlana. 2017. Lexical Blending in Ukrainian: System or Sport? Ph.D. dissertation, University
of Calgary. DOI:10.11575/PRISM/26753.
Zaim, Muhammad. 2017. "Shifting the System of Indonesian Word Formation: The Study on
Morphology and Sociolinguistics of Acronyms, Blending, and Clipping." Humanus, 16, no. 2:
248–262. DOI:10.24036/humanus.v16i2.8690.