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. This article seeks to shed light on the wordformational process of lexical blending in modern Slovene, which was practically non-existent some decades ago, but has become increasingly productive during the recent years. The reason for the emergence of this type of coinage so far unfamiliar in the language system is sought in the increasing influence of the English language on modern Slovene. While lexical blends in Slovene appear sporadically and seem to remain limited to particular types of text, it is nevertheless somewhat surprising that a word-formational - 142 Eva Sicherl process so alien to the basic inflectional/ morphological nature of the Slovene language should gain in popularity to such an extent. The following sections provide an overview of the more recent observations on lexical blending in English and in some other languages; these are compared with the rare treatments of blends by Slovene authors. The place of blending within the Slovene morphological system is discussed under 3 below, and a distinction is made between blends imported from English and blends made in Slovene from either foreign or native language material. Finally, the text types in which blends appear in Slovene and their possible institutionalization are discussed. British and American linguists trace the first blends back to Renaissance texts (e.g. < + in Shakespeare) 1 , yet this kind of formation remained relatively rare until the second half of the 19 th century (see Bryant 1974: 163). It has found a new lease on life with Lewis Carroll and his , and (1871), in which the author himself explained his newly coined blends (e.g. < + ) and named them “portmanteau words”. However, the Anglo-American word-formational literature now prefers the term (see Bauer, Adams, Plag). The 20 th century saw an enormous increase of blends in English, resulting in numerous linguistic discussions dealing with them (see, for example, the list of articles on blending in Algeo back in 1977: 47). Most authors agree that the wordformational process of blending is gaining ground, while blends themselves mostly remain nonce words which rarely become institutionalized and part of the general vocabulary. Thus, Bryant (1974: 163) concludes that blends often appear in media language and in the names of companies and their products. The new millennium saw a powerful new impulse in the productivity of English blending. However, new blends still mostly remain nonce words; consequently, they are not identified by the corpora and this only allows an approximate evaluation of the productivity of the process (Bauer 2014, pers. communication, ESSE conference Košice, Slovakia). Thus, for example, Adams (2001: 141) maintains that “blending inevitably remains a marginal process, its products ephemeral and restricted in use”, while Bauer (1983: 236-237) already stated back in the 1980s that “it is a very productive source of words in modern English, in both literary and scientific contexts”. 1 Pyles (1971: 298) quotes an even earlier instance from the late 14 th -century Middle English romance (see also Algeo 1977: 47): < „warrior‟ + „noble‟. 143 English-Influence-on Word-Formational Production in Slovene While several typologies of blends have been proposed (e.g. Algeo 1977, Bauer 1983 and 2002, Plag 2003, Lehrer 2007, to name just a few), and different definitions of the phenomenon put forward (cf. Renner et al. 2012: 2-3 on what the authors name “terminological and definitional dissonance”), each focussing on a somewhat different perspective of the blending process 2 , the definition and typology as proposed by Bauer (2002: 1636-1637) will be used to discuss blends in English and shed some light on the emerging blends in today‟s Slovene. Bauer (2002: 1636) defines blending as “the formation of a word from a sequence of two bases with reduction of one or both at the boundary between them”; however, the author admits that the category of blends is “not well-defined, and blending tends to shade off into compounding, neo-classical compounding, affixation, clipping and, […], acronyming” (Bauer 1983: 236). Thus, Bauer later advocates adopting a more prototypical approach with fuzzy boundaries (Bauer 2012: 11-22) to be able to account for the diversity in blending, and to (at least temporarily) overcome the problem of blends being “poorly defined” (Bauer 2012: 11). Bauer (1983: 234; also 2002: 1636-1637) distinguishes the following types of blends in English: a) the blend consists of the first part of the first base and the whole of the second base (e.g. < + ) b) the blend consists of the whole first base and the final part of the second base (e.g. < + ) c) the blend consists of the first part of the first base and the final part of the second base (e.g. < + ) d) the central part of the blend is shared by the two bases, there is overlap between them (e.g. < + ) Bauer (1983: 234-5) points out that the resulting blended lexeme usually allows some kind of (morphological) analysis, with at least one of the elements transparently recoverable in most cases. However, the choice of the splinters to be combined may remain somewhat random, and the formation itself restricted by unclear rules, of which only the phonological/ prosodic and orthographic constraints seem to have been subjected to in-depth analysis (see also Bauer 1983: 235, Kubozono 1991, Plag 2003: 123-126, also Piñeros 2004). 2 In general, Bauer‟s criteria (1983, 2002, 2006, 2012) are formal, Plag (2003, but see also Dressler 2000) has a more semantic perspective, Arcodia and Montermini (2012) use primarily morphophonological criteria in their treatment of blends. 144 Eva Sicherl More transparent are those blends in which the two words used as bases are not clipped at all, and there is overlap either in pronunciation, in orthography, or both; Bauer (1983: 235-236) cites Adams‟ example of < + . Related to these are the so-called graphic blends, which all contain overlapping, frequently with embedded abbreviations or acronyms (e.g. < + , cf. also Konieczna 2012: 62-64). Bauer further mentions lexemes which have probably been coined as blends, but may not be recognized as such by other language users (cf. Bauer 1983: 236 and Bauer 2002: 1637); the splinters used may be also analysed as neo-classical compound elements (e.g. < + ) or eventually become re-evaluated as affixoids (e.g. the element from , now used as suffixoid in , , etc.). Semantically, blends have often been defined as lexemes denoting entities “that share properties of the referents of both elements” (see, for example, Plag 2003: 122), thus a is both breakfast and lunch, and is both smoke and fog. Some authors (e.g. Kubozono 1991, Plag 2003) treat only such cases with “merged semantics” as proper blends, while others (e.g. Algeo 1977, Adams 2001, Bauer 2002) also include shortened compounds or syntagmatic combinations, such as < + . It can safely be assumed that under the influence of English as a global language, the wordformational process of blending would have begun to appear in some other languages, including Slovene, in which such nonsystemic coinage is viewed as language peculiarity and the use of such formations is marked. Such influence has been observed for modern Polish (see, for example, Koniezcna 2012). Lexical blends in Slovene typically appear in conversational language and can thus be found in all media communication as well as in language creation; blends in written texts are often seen as a result of writers' and/ or translators' creativity and testify to the playfulness of language style. Blends in Slovene tend to be frequent in the language of the youth and in excessive urban sociolects; both of these usages deviate from standard Slovene and other cultivated sociolects. The blends that will serve to illustrate the process of blending in modern Slovene for the purpose of this article have been sporadically collected by the author from the mass media (mainly journalistic texts), advertising written material and colloquial texts (e.g. blogs, Internet forums, and the like). A large majority of these blends remain nonce formations, and, though eyecatching, will probably never be institutionalized and/ or lexicalized. 145 English-Influence-on Word-Formational Production in Slovene Extraction of blends from corpora is therefore practically impossible, it appears that the only exception to this is the affixoidal formations of the - type. Thus, the Nova beseda corpus yields coinages such as [someone obsessed with art], čokoholik [someone obsessed with chocolate], [someone excessively house proud], [someone obsessed with music], [someone obsessed with concerts], [control freak], [someone obsessed with shopping], [someone obsessed with dance], [someone obsessed with politics], [someone obsessed with comics], and several of these could be treated as compounds rather than blends. Slovene linguists have dealt with blends only perfunctorily. Toporišič (1992: 212) merely mentions the phenomenon of overlapping as a phonological process of sound overlap at the contact of two morphemes. However, a somewhat more detailed description of Slovene lexemes formed with some overlap and simultaneously with truncation and fusion of one or both bases can be found in Logar (2006), Stramljič Breznik (2008), and Voršič (2013). The process of blending in Slovene thus involves two already established word-formational processes, i.e. truncation and juxtaposition, with the optional addition of overlap, as exemplified by the following already lexicalized instances: a) kočerja < [lunch] + čerja [dinner] for „late lunch/ early dinner‟ b) ričota < rič [barley stew] + ž [risotto] for „mix of barley stew with rice‟ 3 Such instances comply with Kelly‟s simple and colourful definition of blends as words “formed by snipping components from existing words and stitching the components together either through simple concatenation or through concatenation coupled with overlap of shared phonological segments” (Kelly 1998: 579). In the formation of blends in Slovene, two basic presuppositions should be met to justify the coinage:  the blend should be semantically transparent and stylistically effective,  the level of reduction of individual bases should be adapted to the pronunciation/ articulation and is thus subjected to the of the creator. The Slovene blends discussed below are therefore all lexemes formed from a sequence of two bases with some reduction of one or both at the boundary between them, and, possibly, a phonological and/ or 3 Source: http: / / www.fran.si/ (accessed November 2017 - March 2018) 146 Eva Sicherl morphological overlap. Semantically, both shortened and merged syntagmatic combinations as well as shortened and merged paradigmatic combinations have been treated as blends. 4 The reason for this is that from the synchronic point of view it is often impossible to pinpoint the two underlying bases, particularly the first base of the combination used in the formation of the new coinage; due to the randomness of the reduction, the base of the blend can sometimes be either a noun or an adjective, so consequently, the formation can stem from different morphophonological structures, as in: < [evil ] + [Slovenia] < [malice ] + [Slovenia] < [evil ] + [Slovenia] < čin [crime ] + [Slovenia] < činska [criminal ] + [Slovenia] < [scientific ] + [festival] < [science ] + [festival] This feature is clearly a sign of non-systemic formation; however, Slovene language users nevertheless seem to have no difficulty in deciphering the meaning of such coinages. Illustrative examples of blends below therefore include instances in which the first element modifies the second element, as in: < [science] + [festival] „festival of science‟ < [vegetables] + [exchange] „exchange of vegetables‟ nežnovanje < nežn [gentle] + [caring] „caring gently‟ Further examples include instances in which both base words are somehow semantically related; the two underlying words usually belong to the same syntactic category. The creator associates the two bases on the grounds of some mutual shared characteristic (cf. also examples from Colombian Spanish in Piñeros 2004), which can be: a) a common morpheme < [cool] + [good] „really good‟ 4 No distinction will therefore be made between associative blends or portmanteaus and syntagmatic blends or telescopes (cf. Algeo 1977 and Piñeros 2004). 147 English-Influence-on Word-Formational Production in Slovene b) a common or similar phoneme ričota < č [barley stew] + ž [risotto] „mix of barley stew with rice‟ c) a common or similar meaning < [beast] + [wild boar] „Gruffalo‟ As indicated above, many blends are subject to dual interpretation and, consequently, cannot be explicitly classified by their syntactic structure (see also Konieczna 2012: 66-68 and her discussion of Polish blends and their underlying endocentric or exocentric structures). The formation of blends in modern Slovene comes close to juxtaposition. However, even within juxtaposition, blends in Slovene have been regarded rather as an exception than as a regular type of word-formation. Thus, Toporišič (2006: 184-185) discusses juxtaposition as a process which may also include a loss of certain grammatical properties, but with the prosodic/ syllabic structure of the underlying base(s) remaining intact (2006: 370), and cites examples such as: [one-and-twenty] „twenty-one‟, [not-willingly] „unintentionaly‟, [beforenoon] „morning‟, [each-to-himself] „apart‟. Vidovič Muha (1988: 32; 2011: 112) examines juxtaposition as an extra-systemic process of word-formation, which is unpredictable because it is difficult to determine which part of the (underlying) base is transformed into the affixal part and which into the base part of the juxtaposition. Following the morphophonological rules of the language, the processes of overlapping and truncation can also be observed within juxtaposition. Where there is doubling of sounds or overlap at the contact of two words and there is also doubling of morphemes, overlap at the contact leads to truncation or omission of a part of the word or words. In Slovene, therefore, juxtaposition can be regarded as a starting point which may consequentially bring about overlap and truncation. Whether blending as a process is to be regarded as a sub-category of juxtaposition or as a word-formational process in its own right is an issue that needs to be solved by Slovene grammarians. A typological classification of Slovene blends can nevertheless be proposed, based on the classification put forward by Bauer for English blends (see 2.1 above): a) The blend consists of the first part of the first base and the whole of the second base [vegetables] [exchange] [sweet] + [brandy] 148 Eva Sicherl [documentary] + [portrait] smučanorija < smuča [skiing] + [craze] b) The blend consists of the whole first base and the final part of the second base videodžej < [video] džej [D.J.] [aqua] [aerobics] [Inland Revenue] [hairsplitting] c) The blend consists of the first part of the first base and the final part of the second base kočerja < [lunch] čerja [dinner] [mechanics] [electronics] [science] [festival] d) The central part of the blend is shared by the two bases, and there is overlap between them mulčad 5 č [brats] č [kids] [literature] [radio] [whisky] [kilometre] [beer] [steering wheel] [sex] [texting] [scientific] [festival] šolimpijada < š [school] [olympics] [glamorous] [camping] nežnovanje < nežn [gentle] [caring] [virtual] [friend] [pilates] [rhetoric] [swindler] [politician G. Virant] [press] [prostitute] 6 5 Examples mulčad and taken from Stramljič Breznik (2010: 171, 175). 149 English-Influence-on Word-Formational Production in Slovene mafijanković < [mafia] nković [mayor Z. Janković] Closely related to type d) are graphic blends, which can also be found in Slovene, such as the title of a series of lectures on science intended for the lay public: ZnaČAJ znanosti [character of science] Embedded within the title is the word ČAJ [tea], suggesting that at the lecture tea is served to the listeners. Further, Slovene forms blends with elements that could be termed affixoids, such as: megastično < [mega-] + stično [fantastic] Vičstock < Vič [area of Ljubljana called Vič] + [-stock as in Woodstock] „festival organized by the Vič Highschool‟ It appears that blends in Slovene most frequently belong to type d), which is also the most frequent type of blend in English (cf. Bauer 1983: 235-236). However, further research is needed to corroborate this assumption (see also 5 below). Many blends that appear in Slovene texts have been borrowed into Slovene from English as anglicisms. Slovene native speakers are mostly unaware of their actual origin and, consequently, of the way these lexemes have been formed; they have been adapted to the Slovene language system and are used in Slovene as any other borrowed lexeme. Examples of this type of blends are: Eng. Eng. Eng. Eng. 6 Stramljič Breznik (2008: 153) uses the term or for coinages made of two constituents that originate in different languages, e.g. English (press) and Slovene (prostitutka). 7 The status of such lexemes as blends is somewhat dubious as in this type of formation the first parts of the two bases are joined to form a new coinage. 150 Eva Sicherl Eng. Eng. Eng. Eng. Among the blends borrowed from English, there are some where the two bases are also recognizable in Slovene, like for example: < Eng. < Eng. < Eng. < Eng. < Eng. < Eng. < Eng. < Eng. < Eng. < Eng. < Eng. Blends that have been created in Slovene remain nonce words as a rule; these are often coinages that have been made on purpose to attain a certain stylistic effect, usually in literary texts, or to influence the reader, usually in advertising texts. Blends typically appear as ingredients of topical conversational language, which makes possible and sometimes even demands immediate coinage of various designations. Whether such formations eventually become commonly used depends on their frequency and communcational functions. The blends listed and explained below have mainly been collected from journalistic texts, advertising written material and texts appearing on blogs, Internet forums, etc. Characteristically, blends appear where “words are required to draw attention to themselves” (see also Adams 151 English-Influence-on Word-Formational Production in Slovene 2001: 140), so their pragmatic function within a given context should also be taken into consideration. Quite often they appear as witticisms that the speaker creates with the intention of striking the listener with a clever semantic association between two or more lexical meanings packed together in one word. So it should not come as a surprise that many blends with a jocular flavour to them turn up in texts as instruments of sarcasm and humour. One of the typical blends coined in Slovene is the following adjectival blend taken from the advertising campaign of the Skoda car company: [cool] + [good] „special, exceptional, good‟ The adjective is now associated with Slovene Skoda car dealers, and found in collocations such as [good offer of vehicles], [good loans], [good stocks]. Another adjectival blend has been coined by copywriters working for the Slovene Telecom: dža st < džabe [cheap]+ [the best] The two slang expression were combined to address the target audience, i.e. young users of mobile phones; the adjective has been used in the name of one of the mobile phone packages and indicates that the package is both cheap (using the slang word džabe [free], originating in Serbian/ Turkish) and the best (using the English superlative form). The following coinages have been taken from a don‟t-drink-and-drive campaign: [whisky] + [kilometre] [beer] + [steering wheel] Similarly, the Mercator chain store issued an advertisement flier for school supplies: š impijada < šol(sk)a [school] + [olympics] A hair salon in Ljubljana advertises itself as providing nežn < nežno [gentle] + [care] „extremely gentle care of hair‟. 152 Eva Sicherl Not infrequently, blends are used in names of companies: Lektorična < lektorica [proofreader] + gospodična [miss] The name of the company Lektorična is explained as “Lektorična is a miss who takes care of proper language. She proofreads, translates and teaches”. Gratel < gradbeništvo [civil engineering] + [telecommunication] [Kamnik] + [bus] „bus service operating in the Kamnik area‟ A civil initiative for an exchange of surplus seeds, seedlings and crops from home gardens has chosen the following name: [vegetable] + [exchange] „Crops2swap‟ The annual festival of scientific lectures, experimental workshops and adventures taking place in Ljubljana has been named: [science] + [festival] A series of lectures on science intended for the lay public where tea is served to the listeners has been named: ZnaČAJ (znanosti) < značaj [character]+ čaj [tea] Similarly, a dog hotel is advertised as: [wuff-wuff] + [hotel] 8 Ljubljana Modern Gallery invites to an event in its cafeteria called: [art] [dicussions] 8 Source: https: / / pikaboo.si/ (accessed March 2018) 153 English-Influence-on Word-Formational Production in Slovene Finally, the Botrstvo project sponsoring poor children has sold biscuits called Nasmeškotek for Easter, with the proceeds going to charity: Nasmeškotek < nasmeh [smile] + piškotek [biscuit] Blends are occasionally found in literature, testifying to the creativity of either the author or the translator. Thus, from a children‟s book by Julia Donaldson has been translated into Slovene by Milan Dekleva using the coinage , imitating the original word structure: [beast] + [wild boar] (English original: ) The same translator coined a number of blends in his translation of Roald Dahl‟s ; somewhat surprisingly, the blends are used in the translation even when the orginal uses ordinary compounds or phrases: [sugar] + [brandy] (English original uses ) [roller-skates] + [wheels] (English original uses ) In these, the coiners link two or more words by establishing a clever semantic association between them. It is particularly political texts that may abound in such creations; these tend to be used with a negative connotation, and serve to express the authors‟ views rather than observing the conventions of political correctness. Extragrammatical morphology plays an important part in this kind of creation and also generates language games, puns, and other playful and expressive word creations (see, for example, Dressler 2000, Zwicky and Pullum 1987). Below is an instance of an original and witty semantic association created by the writer : [Inland Revenue] [hairsplitting] „exceeding- ly hairsplitting like the Inland Revenue in their interpretation of tax legisla tion‟ 154 Eva Sicherl Politicians are often referred to by blended nicknames: Mafijanković < [mafia] + nković [Janković] „the mayor of Ljubljana Janković, suggesting he has mafia connections‟ 9 [swindler, cheat] + [Virant] „politician Virant, who caused the Slovene government fall in 2013, suggesting his allegedly dishonest political practices‟ 10 [Catholic] + [taliban] „a Catholic with extremist views‟ 11 In English, most blends formed are nouns; verbs and adjectives are less frequently coined (cf. Adams 2001: 140, also Renner et al. 2012). In Slovene, the nominal category seems to prevail as well, but given the wordformational properties of the Slovene language system, further formation of corresponding verbs, adjectives, and adverbs by means of suffixation is feasible, as in: previrant „dishonest politician‟ 12 > previrantka „dishonest female politician‟ > previrantstvo „dishonest acting in politics‟ > previrantski „dishonest in politics‟ 13 previrantsko „dishonestly‟ 14 Thus, our corpus of examples, albeit very limited, has also yielded the following adjectives: 9 Source: http: / / www.pozareport.si/ ? Id=46&View=tema&temaID=16342&show= 10 (accessed March 2018) 10 Source: http: / / www.emka.si/ previrant-zakrinkani-birokratski-morilec-slovenije-alizakaj-je-slovenija-bankrotirala/ PR/ 1526738 (accessed March 2018) 11 Source: https: / / med.over.net/ forum5/ viewtopic.php? t=11029683 (accessed March 2018) 12 Source: http: / / www.delo.si/ novice/ politika/ miro-cerar-bo-sodeloval-z-nekompro mitiranimi-politiki.html (accessed April 2018) 13 Source: http: / / www.rtvslo.si/ zivalskiotok/ prispevek/ 292896 (accessed April 2018) 14 Source: http: / / www.rtvslo.si/ modload.php? &c_mod=blog&op=func&func=print &c_menu=75274 (accessed April 2018) 155 English-Influence-on Word-Formational Production in Slovene megastičen < [mega-] stičen [fantastic] 15 šokastičen < šok [shocking] + stičen [bombastic] 16 [vodka] + [drunk] 17 „drunk with vodka‟ The only verb found in the corpus is: [twitter] + [vanish] 18 „vanish from twitter‟ Not uncommon are verbal nouns of the type: nežnovanje < nežn [gentle] + [care] „gentle caring (of hair)‟ [sex] + [texting] „texting of sexually explicit messages‟ Quite often, it is possible to detect an underlying adverb + adjective pattern in a blend, as in: < [exceptionally] + [good] „really good‟ < [as is typical of Inland Revenue] + [hair splitting] It needs to be pointed out, however, that due to the limitations of the corpus on which the present article is based, any estimation of the categorial distribution of blends in Slovene is merely tentative. The process of blending can be seen as an indicator of current language change. Word-formationally, blends testify to the expressive and semantic qualities of the Slovene language and put these qualities to the test. As far 15 Source: http: / / www.paradaplesa.si/ ? Id=video&View=novica&noviceID=1122#. WlXgdDRDC70 (accessed November 2017). The adjective megastičen has been recorded by Rekar (2013) in her dictionary of nonstandard and offensive words, which may be suggestive of its more frequent use in mostly informal texts. 16 Source: http: / / novice.najdi.si/ predogled/ novica/ e6e64b56a46204ebf0362ce0445a 9291/ Domovina/ Slovenija/ %C5%A0OKANTNO-Izbranka-Domovine-portala-Nove- Slovenije-je-Romana-Tomc (accessed November 2017) 17 Source: http: / / razvezanijezik.org/ (accessed March 2018) 18 Source: http: / / razvezanijezik.org/ (accessed March 2018) 156 Eva Sicherl as borrowing from other languages is concerned, in our case from English, blends in Slovene introduce new types of formation, which add overlap and truncation to the already established process of juxtaposition. With a more frequent and continuous use of blends, these parallel morphonological processes can bring about some degree of standardization in formation; standardization of use and formation can eventually give such coinages some systemic predictability in Slovene as well. On account of their currently insufficient word-formational and semantic systemic predictability, blends presently cannot be tracked and tagged by corpora as a specific type of coinage. Like all new language phenomena, blends are also characterized by markedness of use in style and genre. Therefore blends are not yet part of standard Slovene, but are typically found in less refined sociolects as well as in jargon and slang speech due to their stylistic effect and value particularly in conversational Slovene, while in writing they frequently appear in advertising texts. Due to the great heterogeneity of underlying bases Slovene blends presently cannot be typologically classified in entirety; it would seem reasonable to treat them as a kind of word-formational continuum (see also Bauer 2012: 11-22). Bauer seems to suggest a prototypical approach in the treatment of blends since lexical blending can presently (even in English) be most adequately described if it is seen as a prototypical fuzzy category. Since, according to Bauer (2012: 21), “blends are still a descriptive problem”, it is probably best to adopt the broadest definition possible and then treat individual characteristics of blends as more or less typical features and not as obligatory features in our research and analysis of lexical blends. Presently, we can conclude that in Slovene blending the two most productive patterns in word-formational terms appear to be the one in which the blend consists of the first part of the first base and the whole of the second base (e.g. < / [documentary]+ [drama]), and the one in which the central part of the blend is shared by the two bases (e.g. < [whisky] + [kilometre], < [scientific] + [festival]). This can be explained by the general preference of the Slovene language system for subordinate phrases consisting of an adjective and a nominal headword (e.g. , ); consequently, such formations can be expected to be fairly frequent. In this article, certain types of (con)texts have been identified in which blends tend to appear with a somewhat higher frequency than elsewhere: marketing texts, children‟s literature, blogs and forums. Naturally, there remains the question of the representativeness of the corpus itself. The tentative conclusions presented here can only be valid for this very limited collection of blends. The study, however, has opened up a number of issues for possible future research. First of all, the 157 English-Influence-on Word-Formational Production in Slovene collection of lexical blends in Slovene would need to be enlarged by other texts and possibly other genres for researchers to gain more conclusive evidence and a more reliable picture with regard to the general tendencies of lexical blending in Slovene. Further, some blends may gradually develop more than one sense and undergo semantic extension; these will typically appear in jargon or slang use and will also be mainly found in various internet forums, blogs, etc. However, this aspect of lexical blending needs to be subjected to further research in the future and no conclusions about it can be drawn from the present material. Adams, Valerie (2001). . Harlow, Essex: Pearson Education Limited. 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