Les mots-valises : des mots malicieux Un exemple en littérature de jeunesse

What is usually called children’s literature is a fertile field for investigating questions of neology. Claude Ponti is one of those contemporary French authors whose writing is characterised by lexical creation.
This article examines two albums to study from a formal and a semantic viewpoint the lexical blends created by Ponti, and analyses the way they are used. Certain functions are common to other means of lexical creation which are also to be found in the two books under study, whereas others are peculiar to blends. The process sheds light on the way of writing evokes a certain aesthetic, what is sometimes called, in broader terms, the writer’s universe.