How Russian Speakers Express Evolution in Pokémon Names II: The Effects of Contrastive Palatalization and Name Length

Abstract

Kumagai & Kawahara (2022) found that Russian speakers tend to judge names with [Ca] to be more suitable for larger, post-evolution Pokémon characters than names with [Ci]. This result raised a new question regarding whether it is the vowel quality difference or consonant palatalization caused by [i] that affected the responses. The current experiment compared three conditions ([Ca] vs. [C^ja] vs. [Ci]) and found that names with [C^ja] were judged to be least appropriate for post-evolution characters, suggesting the important role of phonemic palatalization. The current experiment additionally showed that Russian speakers tend to judge longer names to be more suitable for post-evolution characters.