Recognition and lexical access of blends in European and Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

The main goal of this research is to analyze the structure of blends. In order to attain a better understanding of this phenomenon, we conducted both offline and online lexical decision task experiments with European Portuguese (EP) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP) speakers. As the main condition for the experiment, we took three types of structure (word clip, clip word, and clip clip), with the preliminary hypothesis being that the blends with a recognizable (i.e., visible) word would be more easily processed. The online test results, however, revealed that structures of the type clip clip, found on blends such as namorido ([namor]ado “boyfriend” + mar[ido] “husband”) and portunhol ([portu]guês “Portuguese” + espa[nhol] “Spanish”) are processed more easily.