From names to nouns and the other way round: on the recognizability of identificatory and descriptive morphological blends

This paper is an attempt at investigating what affects the recognizability of recent and novel identificatory and descriptive blends based on names and nouns within a comprehensive framework of analysis which brings together insights from previous structural studies, psycholinguistics, pragmatics, natural morphology and the theory of complexity. As will be seen, such blends have a descriptive dimension not only when used as nouns, but also when used as names: Specifically, next to an identificatory function, blends as names may take on discriminatory, categorizing and expressive/evaluative functions. Morphotactic complexity and (if only marginally) morphosemantic complexity affect the recognizability of the blend. However, failure in understanding blends based on at least one name or blends used as names also depends on the encyclopaedic knowledge of the addressee, and on his/her direct or surrogate experience of the related reference.