Vinh university foreign languages Department ------------- Summary of graduation thesis A study of blends in english (nghiªn cøu tõ hçn hîp trong tiÕng anh) Field: Lexicology Supervisor: KiÒu HuyÒn Tr©m (M.A) Student: Lª ThÞ §«ng KiÒu Class: 45E3 - English 1 Vinh, 2009 Acknowledgement To complete this study, I received help from several people. First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitute to M.A Kieu Huyen Tram, my supervisor, who helped me very much to do this study. If not for her valuable and insighful guidance, comment and critism, my thesis would not have been completed. I am greatly indebted to all the teachers of Foreign Language Department for their comprehensive lessons as well as their encouragement, especially M.A Vo Hong Minh who introduced me this topic: A study of blends in English. I also take this opportunity to express my special thanks to the students from Faculty of Foreign Languages and members of class 45E 3 – English for their willingness to answer my questions and support information for me. Finally, I am immensely greatful to my family and my friend who facilitied for me to finish this thesis Vinh, May 2009 Lª ThÞ §«ng KiÒu 2 Table of contents Acknowledgement .i Table of contents .ii Part A: Introduction .1 1. Reasons for the study .1 2.Aims of the study .2 3. Scope of the study .2 4. Methods of the study .2 5. Design of the study 3 Part B: Development .4 Chaeter I: Word and word formation .4 1. Word 4 1.1. The notion of word .4 1.2. Origin of word 5 1.3. Chacteristics of words 5 1.3.1. Uninterupted unit .5 1.3.2. Positional mobile .6 1.3.3. One or more morphemes .6 1.3.4. Occuring typically in the structure of phrase 6 1.3.5. Belong to a specific class or part of speech .7 1.4. Classification of words .7 1.4.1. According to the semantic aspect, words consist of content words 3 and function words 7 1.4.2. In terms of the morphological structure 8 1.4.3. According to parts of speech(grammatical category) 8 1.4.4. In terms of the stylistic aspect of the language .8 2. Word formation .9 2.1. Definition of word formation .9 2.2. Types of word formation 9 2.2.1 Compounding .9 2.2.2. Derivation 10 2.2.3. Shortening .12 2.2.4. Conversion 13 2.2.5. Sound Imitation .13 2.2.6. Inflection .14 Chapter II: Blends in English 15 1. Definition 15 2. History of blends .16 3. Determining source words of blends .17 3.1. Computational Models of Blends .18 3.1.1. Finding candidate pairs .19 3.1.2. Statiscal features 19 3.2. Case studies by Stefan 21 4. Types of blends .24 4.1. Algeo’s classification 24 4.1.1 Phonemic Overlap 24 4.1.2. Clipping .24 4.1.3. Phonemic Overlap and Clipping .25 4.2. I.V.Arnold’s classification 25 4.2.1. Additive type .25 4.2.2. Restrictive type 25 4 5. Formation 26 5.1. Formation .26 5.1.1. The beginning of one word is added to the end of other word 26 5.1.2. Blends can be formed by mixing multiple sounds from two component words, mostly preserving their order .26 5.1.3. Both components contain a common sequence of sounds 26 5.1.4. We can combine the beginnings of two words to form a blend 27 6. A survey on popularity of blend formation .27 Chapter III: Usages of blends in English .29 3.1. Blends for baby names 29 3.2. Blends in website .29 3.3. Blends in biology 30 3.4. Blends of different languages .30 3.5. Blends used for exercise regimes .30 3.6. The media, advertising and shown businesses .31 3.7. Politics and The economy 31 3.8. Science and technology 32 3.9. Blends in literature .32 3.10. Blends of famous people 32 Part C: Conclusion .33 References .34 Appendix .35 5 Part A: introduction 1. Reasons for the study Nowadays, English is considered the most popular language in the world. Therefore, learning English has become a required task to many people. How to do the task well? That question has always been pondered by both language teachers and learners. When acquiring a foreign language, like building a house, we need to think firstly of material. No doubt, the material of a language is its vocabulary. Forming the study of this dimension (one of the three main ded mentions of language), lexicology is theoretically useful in linguistics and practically useful in foreign language teaching. Interested in lexicology, I really wish to do a study on word- formation. Blends are words formed by fusing parts of words together, e.g. "brunch" is blend of "breakfast" and "lunch", or "motel" is from "motor" and "hotel". That is quite a new field to do a study on. This thesis has been titled as “Blends in English and some applications” due to the following reasons: Firstly, Blend words are a new phenomenon in English and have become popular in this century. They can be created by using parts of words to fuse together. They make lexicon get richer. By studying this topic, we hope to make a list of blends and understand English word-formation by blending Secondly, blends have been applied widely now. They are used as baby names, in trade mark, literature, advertising…Lewis Carroll was well-known for this type. Thirdly, blends are a very interesting but difficult topic. When studying it, we have met many difficulties of material and documents. It is really a big challenge but also, it is a chance for me to put our knowledge and capacity into play. Finally, the reason why this subject is chosen for the study is derived from our own interest. We would like to list blend words in English, study them in definition, types and formation and give some application. By that way, our vocabulary stock would be enriched. 2. Aims of the study The study is about giving a basic knowledge of word, word – formation and particularly blends in English Therefore, the first aim of the study is to help English learners improve knowledge of English word-formation and English blend words. The second aim is to help the learning and teaching of blends. The third is to distinguish blends from compounds, abbreviation… The fourth aim is to help readers identify original words of blends. The final is to satisfy the author’s interest in blends. We have done the study with our great pleasure. Therefore, we would like to share our interest with all those who are attracted by this term. 3. Scope of the study. The study only focus on blends in English The study tries to find the answer to the following research questions: What is blend? How is it formed? What are its types? And what fields is it applied? 4. Methods of the study In order to gain the given aims, the study is based on some methods: The study refers to foreign publications to set up the theoretical background. The main method is listing blend words and classifying them based on their formation. Also some additional methods are used in each step of the study are: - Searching, reading and reviewing books, materials and references related to the study on the process of the studying - Collecting blend words - Giving application of blends 5. Design of the study The study consists of three main parts: Part A is Introduction. This part is divided into: reasons for the study, aims, scope, methods and organization of the study. Part B is Development. This is the main and focused one of the study. It refers to three chapters. Chapter I: Background knowledge. This chapter provides all concepts related to the study. Chapter II: Blends in English. This is the main section of the study. Chapter II: is about Applications of Blends. Part C is Conclusion. The part “Conclusion” expresses a brief overview on the achievements of the thesis and some suggestions for further studies. The next pages of the thesis are References with list of material sources. The last is an Appendix of blend words Part B: Development Chapter I. word and word formation 1. Word 1.1 The notion of word It is difficult to show a theoretical definition of word. Up to now, there have been many concepts of words. All of them are relative and they don’t contain all factors considered as word in language. Linguists hope to give a general definition of word for all languages but until now it is impossible. L.Serba said that word in different languages is different and there may not be any notion of word generally. What a word is relies on which domain you are interested in: - Words distinguished from each other by their pronunciation are phonological words. - Words identified by grammatical variation are word – form or grammatical words: preposition, article, conjunction . - Words identified as items of meaning are lexemes or lexical words: nouns, verbs, adjectives . - Words distinguished from each other by their spelling are orthographic words. According to Howard Jackson and Etienne Ze' Amelia: “Lexical words are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. They have fairly independent meanings and may be meaningful even in isolation??? or in a series…classes of lexical words contain hundreds or even thousands of member and they form open classes". (Words, meaning, and vocabulary: 50) In my opinion, a word is a unit of form and content, and an independent unit of language to form a sentence by its self A word may be made up of smaller meaningful morphemes For examples: - Useful = use + full - Bookish = book + ish - Unlucky = un + lucky - Kiss- me- quick = kiss + me + quick 1.2 Origin of word English belongs to West Germanic branch, one of branches of the Indo- European family. Around the middle of the fifth millenniums BC, Celt were the first people to inhabit England. Their languages were yet another branch of the Indo-European language family. The word English comes from the name of three main Germanic tribes which invaded in the British Isles during the fifth and the sixth centuries: The Angles, The Jutes and The Saxon. The three tribes probably spoke mutually intelligible dialects and the language of the country as a whole seems to have been known as English from this period (Old English).Thus, we often refer to this early form of English as Angle-Saxon or Old English During seventh century, the name of the country was Angle or Anglia( name of the king of Angles). The name became Engle in Old English and the name of language was referred to as English. At the beginning of the tenth century, the word Ungallant did not appear and later England was used. 1.3 Characteristics of words 1.3.1 Uninterrupted unit According to Howard Jackson (Words, meanings, and vocabulary: 50): the word is an uninterrupted unit When elements are added to a word to modify its meaning, they are never included within that word. That are interested in the internal stability of the word( structure of morpheme). However, we can add affixes to word.