L’amalgame : un aperçu historique

This paper explores the history of the notion of blending. It is argued that this notion was first given a theoretical status in the neogrammarian movement, under the name of contamination, coined by Hermann Paul. Contamination is closely related to analogy, a notion which was pressed into service in order to account for some exceptions to phonetic laws. Because the focus was on unintentional instances, the study of contaminations laid the framework for the first systematic analyses of speech errors and accidental blends. The mostly synchronic and morphological study of lexical blends constitutes another strand of research which seems to be posterior to the neogrammarian school and relatively independent from it, though both intersect in some studies. Particular emphasis is placed on this strand, its evolution, and on the various definitions and typologies of lexical blends which have been proposed in the literature. The last part of the paper tries to map the course of a more recent line of research which is rooted in cognitive linguistics. This line of research, as is shown, brings back a theoretical pattern that is, in some respects, reminiscent of the neogrammarians.