Clipped Loanword Blends in Japanese

Résumé

Word-blending is a common and productive process that forms new words by combining components of multiple source words. Different from compounding, blending is defined by the shortening of one or more of the constituent words. This paper conducts a typological analysis of Japanese Clipped Loanword Blend (CLB), a process of word blending involving loanwords. By drawing on existing blendword literature and by investigating the semantics of lexical data, this paper establishes three descriptive categories of Japanese CLBs based on semantic meaning and pragmatic usage: true compounds, true blends, and complex clipped loanwords. Empirical investigation suggests that many blend-word data fall between these categories, possibly due to shifts in meaning and/or usage.