French and English lexical blends in contrast

Abstract

Abstract Two sets of 97 French and 374 English lexical units identified as lexical blends are examined from a contrastive perspective. It appears that English displays a wider variety of patterns than French does – a larger number of marginal types of lexical input combination, of lexical shortening and of phonological splitting. Striking dissimilarities between the two languages also include an inclination for the pattern of double inner shortening in English and the pattern of left-hand-side inner shortening in French, as well as a preference for semantic and phonological right-headedness in English and the absence of a preferred lateral head position in French.