Characteristics of slang formations: blends, clippings, reduplicatives

Abstract

Language can be used both in oral and written forms based on their contexts. While from its context, language can be used in formal and informal situations. People usually use formal or standard language in formal context, while in informal context people usually use informal one. There are some kinds of language varieties that are used in informal context and one of them is slang. Long time ago, slang was mostly used by criminals, but now many communities make their own slang sayings. They create a lot of new words and modify standard words for internal using. This article we dedicate to the studying of the most frequent three types of the slang formation. We propose generative models for three types of extra-grammatical word formation phenomena appearing in English slang: Blends, Clippings, and Reduplicatives. Overall, the models reveal insights into the generative processes of word formation in slang – insights which are increasingly relevant in the context of the rising prevalence of slang and non-standard varieties. These word formation mechanisms are not only appealing from a linguistic standpoint in deepening our understanding of slang but also have applications spanning the development of rich conversational agents and tools like brand name generators. Quite often slang words can be understood through the context, some cultural peculiarities, even if it is a newly created slang lexeme. Listener must always follow the hints that will help him figure out and decipher what is being said by the native speaker and not only. Because of the slang tendency usages spreads far and beyond the boundaries of the countries where English is official language. Language itself consists of some parts, such as morphemes, words, sentences, etc. Each part has its own function and rule. People don’t know where do actually those millions words come from. We as the users of language don’t think about how a language is formed. The meaning of the new word form is influenced by the process of forming a word. This process is usually called word formation process.