Germany, the interfix –s- appears between two roots as in Geburt-s-tag birthday.
In English, interfixes are rare, yet it can be found in technical terms, such as speed-o-meter and mile-o-meter.
After examining the data, the researcher found ten blends which undergo the process of interfixation. Similar to compounds, interfixes can be inserted between
two elements in blends. In blends, the elements are usually in a form of splinters or whole word. Table 4.3 presents these ten blends with interfixation.
Table 4.3 Blends with Interfixation
Linking Element
Blends -a-
1. hairagami hair x origami hair-a-gami
2. pedabowling pedestrian x bowling ped-a-bowling
3. sexaholism sex x alcoholism sex-a-holism
4. workaholic work x alcoholic work-a-holic
-o- 5. blogorrhea blog x diarrhea
blog-o-rrhea 6. smelloscope smell x telescope
smell-o-scope -i-
7. pubilect puberty x dialect pub-i-lect
-u- 8. celebutard celebrity x retard
celeb-u-tard -t-
9. prestitant prestígious x dominaant presti-t-ant
-in- 10. feminoid female x android
fem-in-oid
The application of interfixation in blends is that the interfixes are put in the middle to connect two blended elements. As shown in Table 4.3, the interfixes
involve a variety of vocalic linking elements, such as –a-, -o-, -i-, and -u-. For
instance, hairagami is the blend of hair and origami. Thus, the interfix –a- is used
to link the whole word hair and splinter gami. In smelloscope, the interfix -o- becomes the linking element of two splinters smell and scope. Pubilect has an
interfix -i- which is put in the middle of two splinters of pub and lect. The interfix
–u- is used as a linking element of splinter celeb and splinter tard in celebutard. In addition to vocalic linking elements, the consonantal linking elements such as -t-
and -in- can also be placed in the middle of two blended elements. As shown in Table 4.3, the interfix -t- is used to link splinter presti and splinter ant, while the
interfix -in- is used to link splinter fem and splinter oid.
B. Word Categories of Source Words in English Blends
Word category refers to linguistic category of words or classes of words. According to Radford et al. 2009: 129, there are five major types of word
classes, namely nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions. Furthermore, it is evident that blends are made up of two or more source words. Each source
word conveys each word category. Since blends in this study are the result of two source words, pairs of word category are also examined. This section is going to
discuss these pairs. After examining the resulting blends, the researcher found four major
classes such as adjective blends, noun blends, verb blends, and adverb blends. Compared to other word categories, noun blends are the most numerous. In the
case of 1197 blends, 984 blends 84 belong to this category. Adjective blends have a much smaller number. It includes 137 blends and only makes up 12 .
Then, 44 blends belong to verb blends which only account for 4 . The least number belongs to adverb blends which only consist of 7 blends 0,5 . The
distribution of these four major categories is presented in Figure 4.5.
Figure 4.5
The distribution of Word Category of Resulting Blends
In addition to four major categories of resulting blends, the researcher found ten pairs of word category in source words. These ten pairs are an adjective with
an adjective A + A, an adjective with a noun A + N, a noun with an adjective N + A, a noun with a noun N + N, a noun with a verb N + V, a verb with a
noun V + N, a verb with a verb V + V, an adverb with an adjective Adv + A, an adverb with an adverb Adv + Adv, and a pronoun with a noun Pron + N.
The result shows that pairs of two nouns are the most popular. According to data in Table 4.4, there are 766 blends which combine a noun and a noun, making
up 66 . The smaller number belongs to pairs of an adjective and a noun which make up 16 186 blends. Other blends occupy very small percentage which
worth less than 10 . Pairs of two adjectives account for 7 88 blends. Pairs of a noun and an adjective make up 4 60 blends. Pairs of a verb and a noun 22
blends and a verb and a verb 29 blends only make 2 for each one. Pairs of a noun and a verb 17 blends, an adverb and an adjective 6 blends, and two
adverbs 7 blends only make 1 up . The other one is tremendously small in
12
84 4
Adjective Blends Noun Blends
Verb Blends Adverb Blends
number, thus it is almost not counted, namely blends which combine a pronoun and a noun 0,2 .
Table 4.4 Pairs of Word Category in English Blends
No Word Category
Adjective Blend
Noun Blend
Verb Blend
Adverb Blend
Total Percentage
1. A + A
83 5
- -
88 7
2. A + N
10 176
- -
186 16
3. N + A
48 12
- -
60 4
4. N + N
- 779
- -
779 66
5. N + V
- 4
13 -
17 1
6. V + N
- 19
3 -
22 2
7. V + V
- -
29 -
29 2
8. Adv + A
6 -
- -
6 1
9. Adv + Adv
- -
- 7
7 1
10. Pron + N -
3 -
- 3
0,2 Total
147 998
45 7
1197 100
Notes : A: Adjective; N: Noun; V: Verb; Adv: Adverb; Pron: Pronoun
The following sections present a more detailed discussion of word category in blends which is classified based on major categories of resulting blends. They
are adjective blends, noun blends, verb blends, and adverb blends. It has been already discussed in Chapter 2 that a noun is typically an abstract and concrete
entity in the world. A verb denotes to any action, activity, or state of being. An adjective is a property which a noun possesses. An adverb typically modifies a
verb, adjective, and another adverb indicating how, when, or why something happened or the degree to which a property characterizes an individual or event.
