Emerging hybrid Spanish–English blend structures: ‘Summergete con socketines’

Abstract

This study focuses on the analysis of morphologically induced new hybrid blending patterns in Spanish due to the influence and contact with English. Our data-driven approach does not separate word creation from grammatical phenomena but considers hybrid blends – a completely new emerging pattern itself in Spanish – as the output of speakers’ or users’ word creativity and manipulation that may be subject to morphological laws. However, the limited number of existing examples as well as the understandable lack of records for such recent data led us to analyze them in terms of tendencies and probabilities. We pay special attention to the ordering of the source words according to foreign or native origin; the presence of full forms and the distribution of full words and splinters, clipping and overlapping of the source words, as well as the semantic patterns and relations between the source words.