New lexical blends in The Simpsons: a formal analysis of English nonce formations and their French translations

Abstract

This contribution examines the conspicuous presence of lexical blends in the long-running US television show The Simpsons and consists of two parts. The first part involves the formal analysis of 237 nonce blends in the original English-language version of the show, working on the underlying hypothesis that, despite their novelty, the audience is nonetheless able to easily decipher the blends due to a number of formal choices enhancing the recognizability of their source elements. The second part then examines the translation of these blends into Hexagonal French by taking account of formal and semantic considerations influencing whether the English nonce blends are rendered as blends in French and, if so, whether the latter display the same formal tendencies as in English. It is found that Simpsonian nonce blends notably stand out in terms of preferred type of lexical shortening and prevalence of segment overlap and phonological headedness, in both English and French. These results indicate that, against a widely-held view among morphologists, blends may not constitute a homogeneous class from a formal standpoint.

Keywords

• word-formation
• lexical blending
• nonce word
• English
• French