SEMANTIC TYPES OF BLENDED LEXICAL UNITS IN MODERN GERMAN

Abstract

The article is devoted to the semantics of lexical units, formed as a result of blending in Modern German. Blending is understood as a word-building process of intentional creation of a new word by combining parts of two words after clipping and/or phonemic overlap of the constituents. The semantic interpretation of blended words deals with the detection and semantic classification of the relations between motivating morphemes, constituents of blends. The blended lexical units with coordinative and subordinate relations between constituents were distinguished. In case of the coordinative interpretation we differentiate between the following types: endocentric or additional reading (the blend denotes a pair consisting of both constituents); exocentric reading (the blend denotes a hybrid object possessing some features of both constituents), synonym reading (the both constituents have almost the same meaning) and antonym reading (constituents denote opposites). In case of the subordinate interpretation we distinguish between attributive, adverbial (the first constituent can verbalize a place, a mean, a purpose or a cause of the nominated phenomenon), possessive, associative and situational semantic relations between the constituents of the blended words. The observed semantic types of blends evidence that blending is developing according to the semantic patterns of compound words in the modern German language.