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In:Motivation in Language: A cognitive perspective
Edited by Grzegorz Drożdż and Barbara Taraszka-Drożdż
[Human Cognitive Processing 83] 2027
► pp. 212–235

Chapter 9
Crafting meaning

Cognitive operations behind Romanian lexical blends

 | University of Valencia
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
Lexical blending has attracted growing scholarly attention, particularly in English, with research addressing its definition, structural and semantic properties, degree of entrenchment, and role in prosodic morphology. Despite some cross-linguistic work, Romanian lexical blending remains relatively underexplored. Vasileanu and Niculescu-Gorpin (2022) provide the first fully corpus-based analysis of Romanian blends, focusing on their etymological, structural, phonological, semantic, and stylistic features. Building on but extending this work, the present study adopts both quantitative and qualitative approaches, analyzing a corpus of 120 contemporary Romanian blends drawn from literature and online sources. Drawing on cognitive modeling (Peña 2022), it explains the motivation behind blend formation and demonstrates their systematic nature through cognitive operations such as parametrization, contrast, reduction, and expansion.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Defining lexical blending
    • 2.1The semantics of lexical blending
    • 2.2Cognitive perspectives on blending
    • 2.3Lexical blending in Romanian
  • 3.Methodology and data collection
  • 4.The cognitive motivation for lexical blending in Romanian
    • 4.1Morphosyntactic features of blends
    • 4.2From general to specific: Parametrization in lexical blends
    • 4.3Highlighting differences: Contrast in Romanian blends
    • 4.4Minor but meaningful: Reduction and expansion in Romanian blends
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Author queries
  • References
References (44)
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