HYBRID ENGLISH-SERBIAN AND SERBIAN-ENGLISH LEXICAL BLENDS IN SERBIAN

Abstract

The present paper analyzes 111 contact-induced hybrid lexical blends in contemporary Serbian, i.e. new words which combine two other words belonging to different languages, namely English and Serbian. It aims at determining: (a) the preferences (if any) for the arrangement of the blends’ source words as to whether they are native or non-native, (b) (the frequencies of) the blending mechanisms, (c) the semantics of the blends, including their semantic transparency, as well as (d) some social aspects of the blends’ use. Additionally, the results obtained herein are compared with those for the contact-induced hybrid Spanish-English blends (BALTEIRO 2017) to determine whether the tendencies observed for the Serbian data are also characteristic of the Spanish data. The results show that: (a) non-native or English words tend to be arranged first, as well as fully preserved, as opposed to native words which are normally clipped if appear in first position, (b) discontinuous overlapping blends and blends of two full source words which necessarily overlap constitute the majority of the data, (c) most of the hybrid blends are of the attributive endocentric type, being fairly semantically transparent, and that (d) the Serbian hybrid blends are generally used in those social contexts such as advertising, business and product naming, or entertainment where linguistic creativity is not only highly desirable, but may have an important social function in creatively expressing identities. Finally, the comparative analysis indicates that there are fairly similar formal and semantic tendencies in the creation of the Serbian and Spanish hybrid blends.