Kemmer discusses the role played by phonemic overlaps, phonemic and phonological similarities, emphasizing that these properties are not necessary conditions for lexical blends. She sums it up and as follows: «blends connect not so much whole original words and how many are their lexical parts: this distinguishes them from compound words. Morphological structure is not very important for telescope formations, while phonological properties are extremely important. The phonological similarity of a blend to a part or a whole of the original word increases the accuracy of expression. Science does not have a stable terminology about this phenomenon.
T.R.Timoshenko prefers the term "telescope", defining it as "such a process of word formation, which is the fusion of two (or more) truncated stems or the fusion of a full stem with a truncated stem, as a result of which a new word is formed. Fully or partially including the meaning of all its structural elements» in the works of A.Yu. Muradyan prefers the term "word fusion" and considers it as "the process of creating a new word and combining the forms and meanings of two words already existing in the system of the language with the obligatory truncation of at least one of the original words and their superposition at the junction".
A.N. Zhukova uses the term «contamination" and gives it the following definition: «contamination means the interaction of linguistic units that are in contact either in an associative or in a syntagmatic series. This interaction leads to a semantic or formal change or to the formation of a new (third) language unit. This is a combination, a synthesis of features of different units of classification in one linguistic fact" [Zhukova, 2010].
O.A. Khrushchev, the term «blend» is considered, which is defined as follows: «blends include units in the process of formation of which two processes operate — truncation and combination of components, but when combining the original forms by superposition, the truncation process is not activated. A blend is thus the result of an interaction two or more original units that go through the process of truncation and are combined into a single lexeme, or have similar fragments in their structure and are combined by superposition» [Khrushcheva, 2010].
Thus, we can conclude the above definitions that in the works of linguists there is terminological variability and in different works either the semantic or the structural aspect of telescopic words is singled out. The mention of the process of truncation and the possible imposition of morphs is related to all studies. The studies of the process of telescoping, as well as telescoping formations, date back to the twentieth century. Telescopic formations have always been present in the English language, however, their number was scarce. Their active education took place in the middle of the 20th century. It is customary for scientists — linguists to subdivide the causes of these neoplasms into linguistic and extralinguistic. For example. Yu.P. Ermolenko considers the following linguistic factors:
- Frequent repetition of syntactic constructions in speech (aftermorror = after tomorrow); analogy (weddiquette = wedding + etiquette, netiquette = net etiquette);
- Phonetic similarity of separate elements of motivating words (badvertising = bad + advertising).
Also Yu.P. Ermolenko singles out extralinguistic factors:
- Compromise, when both words are used at the same time when choosing a particular word (prettiful = pretty + beautiful);
- Establishing special associative links between syntactically isolated words (cocacolonization = Coca-Cola + colonization);
- Introducing elements of subjective meaning (expression, novelty, comic effect);
- The implementation of the principle of language economy in speech;
- The discovery and invention of new objects obtained by the method of synthesis, crossing two objects in the works of linguists until about the middle of the last century, telescopy was considered and identified with such word-formation processes as abbreviation, reduction or word formation.
This approach is understandable, since all these processes are present in telescoping: abbreviation, shortening, and addition of word elements, many features of these word-forming phenomena coincide.
The analysis carried out allows us to prove that telescoping is an independent method of word formation. A common thing for the abbreviation of affixation, compounding of telescopy is linearity, namely: the formula X + Y is applicable to them, in contrast to non-linear derivatives with the general formula X => Y, which is observed, for example, during conversion. Telescoping is compared separately with each process below.
Telescoping versus abbreviation. For a long time, telescoping was identified with the process of abbreviation. Telescope was considered as an abbreviation by I.I. Borisenko [Borisenko I.I. 1976] E.A. Zemskaya [Zemskaya, 1997]. T.A. Gridina Gridina. 2009]. E.A. Dyuzhikova [ Dyuzhikova. 1997] and others. Scientists considered the abbreviation as a reduction, and therefore attributed to the abbreviation all the processes of reduction of units. As proof of their position, one can take into account the fact that scientists took 12 fragments telescopes for syllabic abbreviations. However, the abbreviation has characteristic features, namely:
- When abbreviating the truncation of parts of words is arbitrary;
- The abbreviation has a fixed stress;
- The meaning of the abbreviation is always equal to the generating phrase;
- There are facts of loss of internal form by abbreviations.
Hence follows the conclusion that the first two features are characteristic of both abbreviations and telescopic formations. The amount of telescoping is arbitrary, they are stable formations, their stress is fixed and most often reflects the accent structure of the main constituent element.
The first difference between the word-formation processes is that abbreviations can be formed from nominal and auxiliary parts of speech, while telescopic units are formed mostly on the basis of full-valued words.
The second difference is that the number of original words in the abbreviation is theoretically unlimited, while the number of original words that make up telescoping varies from 2 to 4. However, it is worth considering the fact that two-part telescopic units make up 98% of all existing recorded telescopings, one can round the number of original words that make up the telescoping to two.
The third difference lies in the morphonological phenomena that take place during the fusion of truncated components. With abbreviation, only amalgamation ("gluing") of fragments occurs, and in telescope units, not only amalgamation occurs, but also fusion of components, which makes the place of the morpheme boundary unobvious.
The fourth difference is the fact that the percentage of abbreviations truncation is about 70%, while the percentage of telescope formations truncation is 10-30%.
The fifth difference is the fact that the telescopic formation, in contrast to the abbreviation, is mostly not a synonym or sign — substitute for the corresponding extended phrase.