Abstract
There has been a growing interest in sound symbolic patterns in natural languages, in which some sounds are associated with particular meanings. Previous corpus-based research identified some specific sound symbolic relationships in Pokémon naming patterns in Japanese (Kawahara et al. 2018b). One of the main findings was that the names of Pokémon characters are more likely to contain voiced obstruents, and are longer in terms of mora count, when the Pokémon characters undergo evolution (e.g. nyoromo → nyorozo; poppo → pijotto). The current study reports three experiments that test whether (i) these patterns are productive in the minds of general Japanese speakers, and whether (ii) the same tendency holds with English speakers. The results show that the effect of phonological length was clearly observed both with Japanese and English speakers; the effects of voiced obstruents were observed clearly with Japanese speakers, but less clearly with English speakers. Along the way, we address other general issues related to sound symbolism: (iii) to what extent the sound symbolic effects identified in Kawahara et al. (2018b) rely on familiarity with Pokémon, and (iv) whether word-initial segments invoke stronger images than word-internal segments. In addition to its research value, we emphasize that this general project on Pokémon names can be useful for undergraduate phonetics education.
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Appendix
The stimuli for Experiments 2 and 3.
| condition 1 | No voiced obstruents | 1 voiced obstruent |
|---|---|---|
| hifuro | domana | |
| mureya | zuhemi | |
| ritoha | zetemu | |
| matoha | negemu | |
| mishimi | mabiho | |
| riyare | tazuri | |
| nehoma | furiba | |
| tsurera | tohoze | |
| karuno | hafubi | |
| satora | ruyoga | |
| condition 2 | 1 voiced obstruent | 2 voiced obstruents |
| bamachi | bedeme | |
| gasoyu | zazohi | |
| bonechi | gudeyo | |
| genefu | darobe | |
| goyamu | goruzu | |
| dosora | dokuba | |
| zeyuri | berada | |
| sozafu | yabude | |
| najiyo | kuguji | |
| hodamo | neguzu | |
| condition 3 | All light syllables | Final long vowel |
| sakiro | hokinee | |
| sukihi | muhuraa | |
| saheshi | kishimaa | |
| tsumohi | kutonaa | |
| wasehe | momuruu | |
| samimu | tsunokee | |
| wakeya | korunii | |
| rihepi | mekiree | |
| soromo | semafuu | |
| raneho | myusaroo | |
| condition 4 | 4 light syllables | 5 light syllables |
| hukoyota | norutehume | |
| tokusuhi | monohehita | |
| henaroho | noshiyohoya | |
| manoyaki | miyarifuchi | |
| mumotoke | yaserenama | |
| nushikoya | haretamonu | |
| harochifu | homiherori | |
| sunemaro | taharohore | |
| fuchikeho | hisahemetsu | |
| ko(s)emuna | takimekama |
Note
The materials presented in this paper have been used in introductory phonetics/linguistics class at International Christian University, Keio University, Kwansei Gakuin University, Otsuma Women’s University and Tokyo Metropolitan University; this paper was also presented as invited lectures at Keio University, Meio University, Seoul International Phonology Conference, and Tokyo Institute for Advanced Studies of Language (TEC). Students and audience at these occasions provided extremely helpful feedback for this general project on sound symbolic effects in Pokémon names; they also helped us confirm that this is great teaching material to use to introduce phonetic concepts and statistical techniques. We thank two anonymous reviewers, as well as Lisa Davidson and Yasuyo Minagawa, who provided constructive written comments on previous versions of this paper. We are grateful to Donna Erickson for proofreading the manuscript. Last but not least, we would like to thank Ms toto-mame for letting us use her pictures for the current experiments, and for letting us reproduce some of them in this paper. The remaining errors are ours.
© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
