Contamination is the situation where a third form emerges from the interaction of two words in a language. As a result of contamination, the formal
similarity is more prominent in the newly formed word. However, the semantic relationship plays an important role between the contagious forms. In the contagion examples we come across in Turkish words, some sound changes have occurred. However, the sound change that occurs with contamination is not like other sound changes. Contamination is not the event of deriving a new word by resembling a word in the language, called analogy. The criteria in contamination is that a third word has emerged from the two affected words. There are examples of contamination in Turkish, some of which have entered the literary language and some of which have remained in the spoken language. In this article, the effect of “meaning” in the contagion examples is emphasized.
Contamination, meaning change, sound changes