Goals of the Study

CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter presents two sections, namely theoretical review and theoretical framework. The theoretical review provides all theories which are relevant to answer the research questions. The theoretical framework provides relation among theories which are used to analyze the data.

A. Theoretical Review

The theoretical review consists of two main parts. The first part presents some previous studies conducted by different scholars in relation with the topic and the second part presents theories related to blending. These theories include word-formation process, combining patterns of English blends, syllabification theory, prosodic analysis in English blends, word category, and meaning identification in blending.

1. Previous Research on English Blends

According to some scholars, blending had been considered as a less productive word-formation process compared to other word formation processes such as compounding and affixation. Dealing with this notion, Bat-El 1996: 283 mentioned that blending was a “minor word formation process” especially in dealing with its productivity and popularity. She proposed that compounding and affixation were more popular than blending. Some morphology textbooks tended to give big portion to these processes to discuss, ignoring blending. Moreover, 11 Algeo 1977 as cited in Lee 2014: 1301 stated that blends were usually used in informal discourse as slang or as words which appear only once in certain discourse, so that people did not pay much attention for being listed in dictionary. In addition, some scholars also regarded blending as an unpredictable and uninteresting word-formation process. Bauer 1988: 39 as cited in Bat-El 1996: 283 said “in most cases…the new word is created from parts of two other words, with no apparent principles guiding the way in which the two original words are mutilated”. Referring to that statement, it was obvious that Bauer expressed his attitude that blending was irregular word-formation process. Lappe Plag 2012: 3 who had collected previous research on blending stated that many scholars also treated blending as irregular word-formation process. Some other scholars who treated blending as an unpredictable word-formation process according to Lappe Plag 2012: 3 were Marchand 1969 and Cannon 1986. Nevertheless, Lappe Plag 2012: 3 also mentioned that there were some researchers which treated blending as a regular word-formation process, namely Kubozono 1990, Bat-El 2006, Bat-El Cohen 2012, Bauer 2012, and Gries 2004; 2012. Treating blending as a regular word-formation process, many studies had been conducted to examine the regularity of blends. In addition to morphological structure of English blends, some studies were focused on examining the phonological structure of English blends. According to Lappe Plag 2012: 6, scholars who studied the prosodic structure are Cannon 1986, Kubozono 1990, Gries 2004, Pineros 2004, Bat-El 2006, and Bauer 2012. As stated in Lappe Plag 2012: 6-7, they were specifically interested in investigating length and stress of blends which determined the structure of blends. In terms of length, Bat-