English Influence on Word-Formational Production in Slovene: The Case of Lexical Blending

The article discusses the emergence of lexical blends in modern Slovene, and compares this to the situation in modern English. The general characteristics of blends in Slovene are outlined and a classification of blends is proposed. Blends are a recent word-formational phenomenon in Slovene as the language system has traditionally preferred other word-formational processes, particularly affixation. The influence of the English language on the formation of such coinages in Slovene is discussed and the types of texts in which blends tend to appear most frequently are presented, i.e. marketing texts, children’s literature, blogs and forums. A distinction is made between blends imported into Slovene and Slovene-made blends, with the latter type being based on the already established word-formational process of juxtaposition. While noun blends prevail, the word-formational properties of the Slovene language system make possible further formation of corresponding verbal, adjectival, and adverbial blends by means of suffixation.