Lexical Blending in Ukrainian: System or Sport?

Date
2017
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Abstract
This dissertation examines the formal, semantic, and syntactic mechanisms involved in the formation and processing of blends in Ukrainian. The objectives pursued in this research are (i) to provide a comprehensive definition of blending, (ii) to determine whether there are any formal, semantic, and syntactic regularities in the formation of blends in Ukrainian, and (iii) to learn what factors facilitate recognition of source words, as well as interpretation of meanings of Ukrainian blends. The objectives are achieved by critically analyzing the relevant literature, conducting an analysis of a corpus of Ukrainian blends, and running three psycholinguistic experiments with native speakers of Ukrainian. Based on the analysis, a comprehensive definition of blending is proposed, which establishes the boundaries between blends and other complex words that resemble them (for example, clipped compounds). The analysis of the corpus of Ukrainian blends compiled in the course of this research reveals a number of regularities in blending. Based on these regularities, a system of formal, semantic and categorial rules which account for the formation of blends in Ukrainian are proposed. Finally, the results of the psycholinguistic experiments reveal that the following factors affect the likelihood of recognition of the source words and accurate understanding of the meaning of blends: the structure of the blend, the modality of presentation of the blend, and the amount of time allotted for its processing.
Description
Keywords
Language, Linguistics
Citation
Winters, S. (2017). Lexical Blending in Ukrainian: System or Sport? (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/26753