§ Original: Japanese, based on semantics§ Rendered in other languages§ 25% of overlap with Japanese§ Japanese: pikachu§ English: pikachu§ French: pikachu§ German: pikachu§ Korean: pikachyu§ Russian: пикачу [pikachu]§ Mandarin:

Darya Kavitskaya, UC Berkeley (and the Pokémonastics team)
The First Conference on Pokémonastics
Keio UniversityMay 26-27, 2018

§ Japanese: Beequen § 

§ Jirachi  
§ “Possibly from желать zhelatʹ

bii – bee (from English)§ kuiin – queen (from English)§ English: Vespiquen

2§ English, German, French(Russian for wish). It may also
involve 幸 sachi (wish,happiness, or fortune) or the
anglicized jireh (yireh, Hebrew
for provider)”§ Japanese: Keromatsu §  kerokero – frog sound§ 泡沫 houmatsu – bubble on the surface of liquid§ English: Froakie§ French: Grenousse (grenouille ‘frog’)3§ Mandarin, Cantonese4

English ‘horsea’
Russian [ˡxorsʲɪ]§ Japanese: Hitokage = hi + tokage

English: kakuna
Russian: [kʌˡkunə]cf. [ˡkokən] ‘cocoon’‘fire’ ‘lizard’§ English: Charmander = char + (sala)mander§ Mandarin:56§ English: Jigglypuff§ NO§ Russian: Джиглипуф

§ WHY? Because Russian and English

phonologies are different:[dʒɨglʲɪˡpuf], [dʒɨglʲɪˡpaf]§ Vocalic inventories§ Consonantal inventories§ English: Psyduck§ Phonotactics§ Russian: Псидак

§ Prosody[ˡpsajdək], [ˡpsʲidək]
78§ Pokémon names were recorded as pronounced by two

10-year old children from Moscow§What generalizations can we make on the§ S: monolingual in Russianbasis of the Russian Pokémon data?
§Will sound symbolism be like in English?
Why or why not?
§What can we conclude about the generalloanword adaptation in Russian?

§ V: L1 Russian (N = 802), L2 Japanese, English (N = 721)

§ Data were transcribed by graduate student research

assistants, fluent in Russian§ Transcriptions were then fully checked by a native

speaker of Russian§ About 25% of the words were corrected for both coders§ Problems: word final devoicing, palatalization (exactly the9English§ ↑ segments

Russian§ ↑ segments

phonological components lacking in English)

English§ ↑ Sonorant C1110Russian§ ↑ Sonorant C12

English§ ↑ Low V§ ↑ Back V§ ↑ segments§ ↓ Labial C

English§ Weight: ↑ Low§ Height: ↑ Low§ Stats Total: ↑ Low

Russian§ ↑ Low V§ ↑ Mid VRussian§ Weight: Low n.s.
§ Height: Low n.s.
§ Stats Total: ↑ Low

13§ English (California) Vowels

14i§ Russian Vowels

uoea1516

17

18

Voicing contrast

English§ Weight: ↑ Voiced C

Russian: Voiced C n.s.
‘Russianfireworks.
Bam! Boom!’19§ It has been widely believed that word-final

Neutralization[ˡdubə]‘oak-GEN.SG’[dup]‘oak-NOM.SG’[ˡsupə]‘soup-GEN.SG’[sup]‘soup-NOM.SG’[ˡgodə]‘year-GEN.SG’[got]‘year-NOM.SG’[kʌˡta]‘cat-GEN.SG’[kot]‘cat-NOM.SG’[ˡrogə]‘horn-GEN.SG’[rok]‘horn-NOM.SG’[ˡrokə]‘fate-GEN.SG’[rok]‘fate-NOM.SG’

20§ English: Charizard

devoicing in Russian is categorical§ However, recently voicing neutralization wasshown to be incomplete (Kharlamov 2014)§ There is more voicing word-finally inrecent/unassimilated loanwords§ Russian: Чаризард [tʃerʲɪˡzart]§ English: Waylord§ Russian: Вэйлорд [ˡvejlərt], [ˡvejlərd]§ English: Klang§ Russian: Клэнг [ˡkleng]
21

22

Speaker V

23Speaker S24

§ Word-final neutralization of voicing is enough to§ This suggests an interesting generalization for inerase some of the significance of voicing
correlations in Russian Pokémonikers.
§ In the first 721 Pokémon (which both kids did),there are 58 word-final voiced obstruents. Outof these, 18 are left voiced by one or both kids.
Apparently, this is enough to lose thecorrelation between voicing and Weight that
holds for English.

English:§ English voicing effect depends mainly on coda

consonants.

§ Voicing effect in English may be due to thelengthening of the vowel before the voiced coda.

§ Effects of voicing in Russian are observed forconsonant duration and glottal pulsing, but notfor preceding vowel duration (Kharlamov 2014)

25

26

27

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§ Palatalization has an iconic function, being

associated with “smallness”, “childishness”,“affection” (Nichols 1971, Ferguson 1977, Ohala1994).
§ This has been claimed for Japanese soundsymbolism (mimetics) (Mester and Itô 1989,Hamano 1998, Kochetov and Alderete 2011)§ No.Why not?

§ Transliteration: All consonants before [i] will

§ Weight: ↓ Palatal C

surface palatalized§ It is not relevant in English so no transfer.

§ Kochetov and Alderete (2011): there is adifference between phonologically conditioned
and expressive palatalization.
§ Expressive palatalization

29§ A marginal linguistic phenomenon§ Applies in a small set of lexical items§ Does not have a phonological trigger

30§ English: Caterpie§ Possible test: palatalization before [e]. In§ Russian: Катерпи [ˡkatɛrpʲɪ]borrowed words, consonants preceding [e] canbe plain, palatalized, or in free variation§ English: Metapod§ [test]/[tjest]§ [temp]/[tjemp]§ [tjema]§ Russian: Метапод [mʲɛtʌˡpot]‘test’‘tempo’‘theme’§ English: Parasect§ Russian: Парасект
31[pərʌˡsekt], [pərʌˡsʲekt]32§ Transliteration from one language to another puts

pressure on the system:§ Vowel-related correlations in Russian Pokémonastics

are different from English;§ Consonants-related generalizations do not hold inRussian.

§ During direct transfer from one system to another(very different) there is no transfer of iconicity.

§ The absence of correlations in Russian reveals

interesting things about the phonology of the source
language.

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Many thanks to the organizers of
the 1st Conference on
Pokémonastics!!!

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