Portmanteau


In linguistics, a portmanteau is a word formed by combining the meanings and parts of the sounds of two or more words. English examples include smog, coined by blending smoke and fog, and motel, from motor and hotel.
In some languages, contamination refers to a subset of blends, where the words combined are synonyms or have similar meanings. This kind of blend can be deliberate or accidental. A blend is similar to a contraction. On one hand, mainstream blends tend to be formed at a particular historical moment followed by a rapid rise in popularity. On the other hand, contractions are formed by the gradual drifting together of words over time due to the words commonly appearing together in sequence, such as do not naturally becoming don't ; however, don't is also an example of a portmanteau morph. A blend also differs from a compound, which fully preserves the stems of the original words. The British lecturer Valerie Adams's 1973 Introduction to Modern English Word-Formation explains that "In words such as motel..., hotel is represented by various shorter substitutes – otel... – which I shall call splinters. Words containing splinters I shall call blends". Thus, at least one of the parts of a blend, strictly speaking, is not a complete morpheme, but instead a mere splinter or leftover word fragment. For instance, starfish is a compound, not a blend, of star and fish, as it includes both words in full. However, if it were called a "stish" or a "starsh", it would be a blend. Furthermore, when blends are formed by shortening established compounds or phrases, they can be considered clipped compounds, such as romcom for romantic comedy.

Classification

Blends of two or more words may be classified from each of three viewpoints: morphotactic, morphonological, and morphosemantic.

Morphotactic classification

Blends may be classified morphotactically into two kinds: total and partial.

Total blends

In a total blend, each of the words creating the blend is reduced to a mere splinter. Some linguists limit blends to these : for example, Ingo Plag considers "proper blends" to be total blends that semantically are coordinate, the remainder being "shortened compounds".
Commonly for English blends, the beginning of one word is followed by the end of another:
  • breakfast + lunch'brunch
Much less commonly in English, the beginning of one word may be followed by the beginning of another:
  • teleprinter + exchange'telex
  • American + Indian'Amerind
  • microcomputer + software ''Microsoft
Some linguists do not regard beginning+beginning concatenations as blends, instead calling them complex clippings, clipping compounds or clipped compounds.
Unusually in English, the end of one word may be followed by the end of another:
  • Red Bull + margarita'bullgarita
  • Hello Kitty + delicious'kittylicious
A splinter of one word may replace part of another, as in two coined by Lewis Carroll in "Jabberwocky":
  • chuckle + snort'chortle
  • slimy + litheslithy
They are sometimes termed intercalative'' blends; these words are among the original "portmanteaus" for which this meaning of the word was created.

Partial blends

In a partial blend, one entire word is concatenated with a splinter from another. Some linguists do not recognize these as blends.
An entire word may be followed by a splinter:
  • fan + magazine'fanzine
  • dumb + confound'dumbfound
A splinter may be followed by an entire word:
  • Brad + Angelina'Brangelina
  • American + Indian'Amerindian
An entire word may replace part of another:
  • adorable + dork'adorkable
  • disgusting + gross'disgrossting
These have also been called sandwich words, and classed among intercalative blends.

Morphological classification

Morphologically, blends fall into two kinds: overlapping and non-overlapping.

Overlapping blends

Overlapping blends are those for which the ingredients' consonants, vowels or even syllables overlap to some extent. The overlap can be of different kinds. These are also called haplologic blends.
There may be an overlap that is both phonological and orthographic, but with no other shortening:
  • anecdote + dotage'anecdotage
  • pal + alimony'palimony
The overlap may be both phonological and orthographic, and with some additional shortening to at least one of the ingredients:
  • California + fornication'Californication
  • picture + dictionary'pictionary
Such an overlap may be discontinuous:
  • politician + pollution'pollutician
  • beef + buffalo'beefalo
These are also termed imperfect blends.
It can occur with three components:
  • camisade + cannibalism + ballistics'camibalistics
  • meander + Neanderthal + tale'meandertale
The phonological overlap need not also be orthographic:
  • back + acronym'backronym
  • war + orgasm'wargasm
If the phonological but non-orthographic overlap encompasses the whole of the shorter ingredient, as in
  • sin + cinema'sinema
  • sham + champagne'shampagne
then the effect depends on orthography alone.
An orthographic overlap need not also be phonological:
  • smoke + fog'smog
  • binary + digit'bit
For some linguists, an overlap is a condition for a blend.

Non-overlapping blends

Non-overlapping blends have no overlap, whether phonological or orthographic:
  • California + Mexico'Calexico
  • beautiful + ''delicious'beaulicious''

    Morphosemantic classification

Morphosemantically, blends fall into two kinds: attributive and coordinate.

Attributive blends

Attributive blends are blends where one of the ingredients is the head and the other is attributive. A porta-light is a portable light, not a 'light-emitting' or light portability; in this instance, light is the head, while "porta-" is attributive. A snobject is a snobbery-satisfying object and not an objective or other kind of snob; object is the head.
As is also true for attributive compounds, the attributive blends of English are mostly head-final and mostly endocentric. As an example of an exocentric attributive blend, Fruitopia may metaphorically take the buyer to a fruity utopia ; however, it is not a utopia but a drink.

Coordinate blends

Coordinate blends combine two words having equal status, and have two heads. Thus brunch is neither a breakfasty lunch nor a lunchtime breakfast but instead some hybrid of breakfast and lunch; Oxbridge is equally Oxford and Cambridge universities. This too parallels compounds: an actor–director is equally an actor and a director.
Two kinds of coordinate blends are particularly conspicuous: those that combine synonyms:
  • gigantic + enormous'ginormous
  • insinuation + innuendo'insinuendo
and those that combine opposites:
  • transmitter + receiver'transceiver
  • friend + ''enemy'frenemy''

    Blending of two roots

Blending can also apply to roots rather than words, for instance in Israeli Hebrew:
  • רמז + אור רמזור
  • מגדל + אור מגדלור
  • Mishnaic Hebrew: דחפ + Biblical Hebrew: חפר דחפור
  • Israeli שלטוט shiltút 'zapping, surfing the channels, flipping through the channels' derives from
  • * Israeli שלט shalát 'remote control', an ellipsis – like English remote – of the compound שלט רחוק shalát rakhók – cf. the Academy of the Hebrew Language's שלט רחק shalát rákhak; and
  • * Israeli שטוט shitút 'wandering, vagrancy'. Israeli שלטוט shiltút was introduced by the Academy of the Hebrew Language in 1996. Synchronically, it might appear to result from reduplication of the final consonant of shalát 'remote control'.
  • Another example of blending which has also been explained as mere reduplication is Israeli גחלילית gakhlilít 'fire-fly, glow-fly, Lampyris'. This coinage by Hayyim Nahman Bialik blends Israeli גחלת gakhélet 'burning coal' with Israeli לילה láyla 'night'. Compare this with the unblended חכלילית khakhlilít ' redstart, Phœnicurus'. Synchronically speaking though, most native Israeli-speakers feel that gakhlilít includes a reduplication of the third radical of גחל √għl. This is incidentally how Ernest Klein explains gakhlilít. Since he is attempting to provide etymology, his description might be misleading if one agrees that Hayyim Nahman Bialik had blending in mind."
"There are two possible etymological analyses for Israeli Hebrew כספר kaspár 'bank clerk, teller'. The first is that it consists of Israeli כסף késef 'money' and the Israeli agentive suffix ר- -ár. The second is that it is a quasi-portmanteau word which blends כסף késef 'money' and Israeli ספר √spr 'count'. Israeli Hebrew כספר kaspár started as a brand name but soon entered the common language. Even if the second analysis is the correct one, the final syllable ר- -ár apparently facilitated nativization since it was regarded as the Hebrew suffix ר- -år, which usually refers to craftsmen and professionals, for instance as in Mendele Mocher Sforim's coinage סמרטוטר smartutár 'rag-dealer'."