Noncontiguous Blends Phonological Characteristics of the Elements Retained in English Blends
for infixes. For that reason, the syllable of infixes must be heavy in order to maintain the stress placement of the base. It is due to the fact that stressed syllable
is always heavy, so a heavy syllable is needed for infixes as the substitute. Otherwise, the stress placement will be different from those in base, meaning that
it is needed to assign stress from the beginning. Now that all data in Table 5.5 have the same syllable size and syllable weight, the stress placement will remain
the same as the base. As shown in Table 4.10, ,
ambi’sextrous is the combination of ,
ambi’dextrous and „sex. The SW1 ,ambi’dextrous is the base, while sex is the infix which must be put in the middle of base. The stressed syllable dex is deleted
and substituted for the infix sex. The stressed syllable dex deks is heavy and monosyllabic, thus the substitute must be heavy and monosyllabic in order to
maintain the stress placement of the base. The infix sex seks is both heavy and monosyllabic so that it is suitable as the substitute of dex. Finally, the resulting
blend becomes ,ambi’sextrous.
D.Meaning Identification of English Blends
The meaning patterns of blends are identified according to the relation between two source words. In terms of the meaning construction, blends are
similar to compounds due to the fact that for some extents blends may be understood as shortened compounds. Therefore, this study will apply four types of
meaning used by compounds such as endocentric, exocentric, copulative, and appositional to identify the meaning of blends.
From now on, the meaning of blends in general is classified into two types, namely endocentric and exocentric meaning. Endocentric meaning in blends
denotes the meaning construction in which the meaning is derived from the element of blends. Thus the meaning is inside the blends. On the contrary,
exocentric meaning is a meaning construction in which the meaning is outside the blends Szymanek, 1989: 48-50.
Nevertheless, the classification of meaning into two general types is not sufficient to describe all meaning. In addition to these two general types, there are
two other types of meaning, namely copulative and appositional meaning. Hereafter, there are four types of English blends in terms of the semantic features,
namely endocentric, copulative, appositional, and exocentric blends. Figure 4.11 illustrates the distribution of blends based on the semantic types.
According to the figure, the significant number of blends is found within three types of blends: endocentric, copulative, and appositional blends. Exocentric
blends, the fourth type, are very limited in number. They are very rare, only making 1 . The most popular type of blends is endocentric blends which make
76 . These blends are the most numerous, meanwhile copulative and appositional blends follow with the smaller number. The percentage of copulative
blends 12 is slightly larger than the percentage of appositional blends 11 .
Figure 4.11 The distribution of Blends based on the Semantic Types
The first type is endocentric blends. Endocentric blends are blends that consist of a head, which is the categorical part containing the basic meaning of the
whole blends, and modifiers, which restrict the meaning. In other words, they signify the relationship between a modifier and a head. Thus, there is only one
semantic head which is preceded or followed by additional information about the head modifiers. In endocentric blends, the semantic heads are inside the blends.
For example: the blend vactor, where actor is the head and virtual is the modifier, is understood as an virtual actor. Another example is the blend abandonware
abandoned x software which is a kind of software which is ignored by its owner and manufacturer. The blend flexitarian is also the example of endocentric blend.
In flexitarian, flexible acts as a modifier which modifies the head vegetarian which meaning is a vegetarian who is flexible to combine meat to hisher meal.
The blend agritourism, where tourism is the head and agricultural is the modifier, is understood as a kind of tourism in which customer do agricultural work. The
blend ecommerce electronic x commerce, ezine electronic x magazine,
76 12
11 1
Endocentric blends Copulative
Appositional Exocentric
cheapuccino cheap x cappuccino, awkfest awkward x festival, flog fake x blog is a kind of commerce, magazine, and cappuccino, festival, and blog,
respectively. The second type is copulative blends. Different from endocentric blends
which only have one semantic head, copulative blends have two semantic heads. It means that there is no source word that is subordinated to another source word.
The relation between the heads is typically equal. Having two semantic heads, the source words of copulative blends refer to different referent. For example, the
blend Chimerica refers to China and America. Other examples are absotively which means both absolutely and positively, and fappy which refers to both fat
and happy. Other examples are happymonius happy x harmonious, scanlate scan x translate, slungry sleepy x hungry, toughicult tough x
difficult, Chindia China x India, and fertigate fertilize x irrigate. The third type of blend is appositional blends. Similar to copulative blends,
appositional blends have two semantic heads. The difference lies on the entity of the description of two source words denotes. Appositional blends belong to one
entity, while copulative blends belong to two entities. Appositional blends also have equal relation between source words. This kind of blends is categorized
according to the usage. First, appositional blends refer to a combination of two things which create a new entity. For example, the blend linner is not a
combination of lunch and dinner meal nor eating lunch followed by dinner. Rather, it refers to a meal time between lunch and dinner, usually around 3 or 4
PM so that it belongs to one time of eating. Similarly, mornoon morning x noon denotes time of late morning or early afternoon. Another example is
transceiver transmitter x receiver which is recognized as one entity. It is not a transmitter and receiver separately. Rather, it is a device of one package of
transmitting and receiving radio or electronic signals. Other examples, desknote desktop x notebook and lapdesk laptop x desktop, are understood in the same
way. Desknote is a combination of desktop computer and notebook computer, while lapdesk is a combination of laptop and desktop computer. In particular,
desknote is a computer which is similar to a netbook in size, yet is designed to remain stationary like a desktop. Lapdesk is a portable laptop which remains
steady like a desktop which enables people to use on their lap. Others are smaze smoke x haze and snizzle snow x drizzle. Smaze and snizzle are a mixture of
smoke and haze and a mixture of snow and drizzle, respectively. Second, appositional blends are also used to describe one with different
descriptions or profession. For instances, the blend saladent salaryman x student refers to salaryman who is also a student. Another example is the blend momager
mom x manager denotes a mom who is also a manager for her daughter. Similarly, hackerazzi hacker x paparazzi is a paparazzi who is also a hacker. In
the same way, hacktivist hacker x activist is a computer hacker who further an activist agenda. Other example is wactress waitress x actress is an
aspiring actress working as a waitress. Third, appositional blends refer to hybrids of animal and plants. Hybrids
create a new entity from the process of breeding among animals and plants. The examples of hybrids of animal are puggle pug x beagle, geep goat x sheep,
wallaroo wallaby x kangaroo, zony zebra x pony, zorse zebra x horse, zebrass zebra x ass, beefalo beef x buffalo, cama camel x llama, liger lion x
tiger, shoat sheep x goat, tigon tiger x lion, triticale triticum x secale, wholphin whale x dolphin, and zonkey zebra x donkey. The examples of
plantation‟ hybrids are plumcot plum x apricot, broccoflower broccoli x cauliflower, pluot plum x apricot, grapple grape x apple, crapple cranberry x
apple, crape cranberry x grape, and tomacco tomato x tobacco. Apart from animal and plant breeding, it includes the hybrids of other things. The examples
are tangelo tangerine x pomelo, swacket sweater x jacket, chork chopsticks x fork, camkini camisole x bikini, and spife spoon x knife.
The least popular type of blends is exocentric blends. This type of blends does not have a head so that their meaning cannot be guessed easily from its
constituent parts. For example, a veghead vegetable x head is not a kind of head. Rather, it refers to person who only consumes vegetable and will not consume
meat. Another example is clamato clam x tomato. Clamato is neither a kind of clam nor tomato. It is a kind of juice, mostly mixed of tomato and clam. Similarly,
fruitopia fruit x utopia is neither a kind of fruit nor a kind of a utopia. It refers to a drink with a fruit-flavor introduced by Coca Cola. In the same way, corpsicle
corpse x popsicle is neither a corpse nor a popsicle. Rather, it denotes a person who has been cryonically frozen like a popsicle in the hope of later revival in
science fiction. Another example is adorabubble adorable x bubble and photopia photo x utopia. Adorabubble and photopia are realized as happiness
and day vision, respectively. In terms of the meaning construction, blends are quite similar to compounds
since blends can be regarded as shortened compounds. The difference is that it is common for compounds to have exocentric meaning, yet blends are not say,
rare. The reason is that, unlike compounds, some parts of words in blends are omitted so that the component of blends cannot be obtained explicitly by reader or
hearer. As the consequence, the reader or hearer needs to think twice harder to guess the idea of a certain blend. First, the hearer or reader needs to guess what
components which make up blends. Second, the hearer and reader needto guess the meaning. In this case, exocentric meaning does not fit well with blends. It can
be a reason that exocentric blends are rare. Actually, blends are created to be easily guessed by people, so that if people
hear or read a certain blend, they get the idea of what it is. People can get the idea of blends because they occur in context. On the contrary, if blends occur in
isolation without the help of context, it will be difficult for people to guess the components which make up blends. For example, Sprite launches a new variant
of Sprite, namely limon. The consumer can easily get the idea of limon because the advertisement acts such a way until the consumer perceives that limon is the
combination of lime and lemon.