INTERPRETING BLENDS IN SERBIAN

Abstract

The present paper explores the extent to which age, education and knowledge of English may help ESL learners in suceessfully reconstructing the bases which served as input material for creating new blends in Serbian. In the first part of the test, the blends are presented in isolation, whereas in the second part they are used in (the original) sentential context. The research was conducted in elementary schools, secondary schools and at university alike, both with pupils/students whose first foreign language is English (and have therefore been learning it since 3rd grade) and students who started learning English later (as a second foreign language). The results obtained confirm the existence of a direct correlation between the factors listed and the interpretation of blends and point to the subjects’ limited awareness of word-formational elements in Serbian, but also to their high level of linguistic creativity.