The Morphology of Pokémon Names

Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität Greifswald Philosophische Fakultät Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Arbeitsbereich Englische Sprachwissenschaft Modul Advanced Specialization Seminar „Morphology“ Wintersemester 2016/2017 Herr Dr. phil. Sebastian Knospe

Oliver Wohlt [ask for current address], 17489 Greifswald E-Mail: [ask for e-mail address] Lehramt Gymnasium Deutsch/Englisch Zehntes Studiensemester Matrikelnummer: 139255

Table of Contents

1. Introduction ...... 2

2. Current State of Research ...... 4

3. Terminology ...... 6 3.1. Word-formation ...... 6 3.1.1. Blending ...... 6 3.1.2. Compounding ...... 7 3.1.3. Derivation and Affixation ...... 9 3.1.4. Clipping ...... 10 3.2. Neologisms ...... 11

4. The Morphology of English Pokémon Names ...... 14 4.1. Occurring Word-formation Patterns...... 16 4.2. Word-formation and Evolution ...... 18 4.2.1. Word-formation of Names within the same Evolutionary Process ...... 19 4.2.2. Word-formation of Different Evolutionary Processes Compared...... 20

5. Conclusion ...... 21

6. References ...... 23 6.1. Printed References ...... 23 6.2. Electronic References ...... 23

7. Appendix ...... 25

8. Statement of Authorship ...... 26

Figure 1. Triangle of reference by Ogden and Richards (1923).. .. Fehler! Textmarke nicht definiert.

Table 1. The number of word-formation patterns in the corpus, with percentage...... 16

1. Introduction Nowadays, people are often confronted with language barriers – even in their own language. Every year hundreds and thousands of new words are added to the dictionaries. But instead of learning every “new word” by heart, it seems very easy for people – at least the younger ones – to add them to their mental lexicon. How is that possible?

An example might help: in the year 2010, the word froyo (frozen yogurt) appeared on many shop signs in every bigger German city. The letter y implies that the word is not of German origin (which is correct) – people who do not speak English might have had difficulties to find out what the word meant. But even English-speaking people were confronted with the problem: in the year 2010, the word froyo could not be looked up in any official dictionary. The following possibilities are left:

• asking the shop owner or a friend about the word’s meaning, • simply ordering the product at the shop where froyo had been offered and trying to find an appropriate name after tasting it, or • using the mental lexicon to figure out the new word’s meaning by comparing it to known vocabulary.

People who are shy (or proud) and do not want to take the risk of ordering food they might not like would go for the last possibility: they would look up their food lexicon and try to find a match to common word patterns and eventually find out that froyo consists of two morphological elements that have been clipped: frozen and yoghurt.1 Words like froyo that appear to be “mixtures” or “short forms” of different words that make it sometimes difficult for people to figure out the meaning are generally perceived as neologisms.

Neologisms can be discovered in every part of society and everyday life: food and beverages, science and art, music and video games. Video games are a special sector where neologisms can appear: not everyone plays a certain video game. The number of people who are confronted with a new word is therefore limited. Furthermore, only in rare cases a neologism expands its range to new recipients who do not play a certain video game – this is solely possible if the word in the game refers to something that can also be discovered somewhere else, e.g. noob (also newbie – ‘being new’) originally refers to an unskilled player of a video game and was

1 Some shop signs would also include images of the new product what would make it easier to figure out the last element, -yo, after seeing the new word together with a white and creamy substance in a cup with a spoon in it. 2 later used in terms of being unexperienced in various everyday conversations: “I’m a total noob at cooking.”

When it comes to neologisms in video games, one game especially received a lot of attention from players same as from linguists: Pokémon.

Pokémon is a Japanese media franchise managed by The Pokémon Company, a Japanese con- sortium between Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures. The franchise was created by Satoshi Tajiri in 1995 centred on fictional creatures called Pokémon.

The Pokémon video games have been successful since the release of the first game in the middle of the 1990s (Yellow, Blue and Red Version – same game, but slightly different when it comes to the storyline or the kinds of Pokémon that are obtainable). The video game has a unique gameplay: the players can collect or catch many kinds of fictional creatures with different names and train them to battle against other players of the game. As a training result, many, though not all, Pokémon characters undergo evolution, and parameter-wise, they generally get stronger, heavier and larger after evolution – and as they change their appearance their names change as well. The names of those creatures are created from the combination of many words.

This term paper will examine the morphological structure of the first-generation Pokémon names (151 names in total). Additionally, the word-formation of Pokémon names of the same evolutionary process will be analysed. As a part of this research task, the names of the different evolutionary stages will be compared to the names of the evolutionary stages of other Pokémon creatures, e.g. to find out if there are any similarities or differences in the word-formation between members of the lowest (or highest) stage of evolution.

There are multiple reasons why only the first 151 Pokémon will be regarded. For example, it is likelier that similar scientific works have been published because a certain amount of time (about 20 years) has passed. Also, from a professional point of view as a player of the Pokémon video game series, the gameplay has become more and more complex with every generation: the issue of gender has become more important, same as evolutionary factors (day- or nighttime, friendship with the trainer, or short-term evolutions only during battle), multiple evolutionary stages of the same Pokémon and so-called baby-Pokémon appear. For reasons such as these, 151 names should be sufficient to give detailed insights on the different word-formation types that appear during the video game.

2. Current State of Research Pokémon names can easily be regarded as “new words”, or so-called neologisms, a speaker or listener is confronted with: even though they are unfamiliar to most people and cannot be found in any dictionary, the meaning (or the reason why the creatures are named in a certain way) can be derived from every word’s (morphological) elements. This means, to examine how Pokémon names are constructed, it is important to know about the existence of various word-formation types.

With his work Word-Formation in English (2003), linguist INGO PLAG dedicates a whole book to the topic of the creation of words. It contains a detailed overview of various word-formation types, such as affixation, derivation and compounding, which helps to analyse the corpus of Pokémon names that are relevant for this paper.

A closer look on the “special case” of neologisms is given in Lexical change in present-day English: a corpus-based study of the motivation, institutionalization, and productivity of crea-

tive neologisms (1998) by ROSWITHA FISCHER. She focuses on different word-formation types of neologisms and their respective phonetical, graphical, semantical and morphological moti- vations that cause newly formed neologisms to depend on existing words or word-formation patterns. She initially discusses the question: “What is a neologism?” Fischer highlights the difficulties that emerge from popular definitions of the term and offers a new definition that is more fitting and elaborated. Furthermore, she states linguistic and psychological reasons for forming and using neologisms in everyday life.

A first approach that links Pokémon to the field of morphology has been published by ALLEEN

PACE NILSEN and DON L. F. NILSEN in the year 2000. Language Play in Y2K: Morphology Brought to You by Pokemon is about how the fictional creatures’ word-formations are useful for teaching purposes. The two authors do not mainly focus on language properties but on possibilities and chances for children’s language awareness. They highlight and explain the posi- tive effect of the Pokémon names’ word-formation on young children in the English classroom: the descriptive nature of the names makes it easier for young children to synthesise, analyse and interact with words. Nilsen and Nilsen make clear that, sometimes, there is more than one possibility to understand or interpret a new word which highlights the problem of people nowadays to reconstruct word formation types to their written-out origin.2

2 A popular example would be a segment of American late-night show Jimmy Kimmel Live where reporters asked various pedestrians to identify the respective American state that is hidden behind the official abbreviation (cf. 2016: online). 4

DIAN RIVIA HIMMAWATI and PRATAMA CIPTA AGI MAULANA examine using basic triangle of relativity by OGDEN and RICHARDS (1923) in a study named The Relevance between Word Formation of Pokémon Name and Its Appearance (2016). They have discovered six types of word-formation processes that had been used in English Pokémon names: coinage, blending, compounding, clipping, derivation, and multiple process. The word-formation types serve mainly to explain the relationship between the linguistic signified and the signifier and approach Pokémon names from a semantic angle.

SHIGETO KAWAHARA and GAKUJI KUMAGAI published an article called Expressing Evolution in Pokémon Names: Experimental Explorations (2016). It is a study on sound symbolic patterns of Japanese Pokémon names. Kawahara and Kumagai performed experiments with 108 partic- ipants that test whether sound symbolic patterns are productive in the minds of general Japanese speakers, and whether the same tendency would hold with English speakers. Although the study mainly focuses on phonetic aspects, it is possible to make a relationship between sound symbolic patterns and word-formation.

In 2014, STE MCLEAN posted a blog entry called Phonosemantics – The Meaning of Sounds. He examines the meaning that certain sounds or combination of sounds carry in the English language at the example of Pokémon names. He offers some explanations on the motivation for naming several of the creatures.

A case study that supports McLean’s statements is called Sound (Symbolic) Patterns in Poké- mon Names: Focusing on Voiced Obstruents and Mora Counts, written by KAWAHARA, NOTO and GAKUJI KUMAGAI. They examined a corpus of all Japanese Pokémon names available as of October 2016. The study explores the effects of voiced obstruents and mora counts (basic counting units in the Japanese language that are much like syllables in the English language) in Japanese Pokémon names, and reveals that both voiced obstruents and mora counts impact Pokémon characters’ size, weight, strength parameters, and evolution levels.

Although most of the listed works do not focus on word-formation in Pokémon names in detail, they prove that it is possible to connect Pokémon names to the linguistic fields of morphology and semantics. Additionally, they assure further studies that will be done in this paper.

3. Terminology To avoid ambiguities during the analytical process, the termini that are relevant for the analysis should be determined precisely. The successful realisation and evaluation of the data are only possible if the relevant terms are defined and discussed in the forefront. For the proper analysis of the Pokémon names’ morphological structures the term neologism and the terminology of word-formation, blending, compounding, derivation and clipping, are significantly important.

3.1. Word-formation

Based on NOAM CHOMSKY’S theory of generative grammar published in 1956, most linguists endorse the statement that a speaker of a language can produce an infinite number of (different) sentences by using only a limited number of lexemes. Although this assertion refers to language on sentence-level, it can also be transferred to the linguistic field of morphology: instead of lexemes speakers use a limited number of morphemes to produce a (seemingly) infinite number of words. Over the past decades, a significant amount of new words has come about. This can be observed when examining the rising number of neologisms – especially acronyms – that have been added to the Dictionary of New English and the Oxford Dictionary of New Words (cf. Fischer 1998: 26).

Like lexemes on sentence-level, morphemes on word-level are bound to various grammatical rules. In the field of morphology, linguists distinguish between five different word-formation types (cf. Plag 2003, Fischer 1998): blending, compounding, derivation (and affixation), clipping, and acronyms – even new words, or neologisms, are produced with due regard to morphological patterns. Consequently, the word-formation patterns need clarification to avoid ambiguities during the corpus analysis. However, acronyms will not be examined further because it is very unlikely that they were used for Pokémon names. As already mentioned in the introduction, people tend to have difficulties in finding the meaning and the reference object behind an acronym. That makes this word-formation type very unfavourable for a video game for children.

3.1.1. Blending Blends “consist of incomplete word elements from two pre-existing words” (Fischer 1998: 34). By comparing it with the mechanism of a telescope, Schmid describes the morphological process as two elements that “are pushed into each other or shortened in some other way” (2011: 6

219). This means that two words merge together into a completely new word: sexploitation is a blend of the two words sex and exploitation. The meaning of blends is either identical with the base words or is derived from it (cf. Fischer 1998: 35).

As seen above, sex and exploitation can be merged easier because they share the same sequence of letters, ex, what creates an overlap of the two words. The part of the word that is retained in a blend is called a splinter (cf. Fischer 1998: 37-38, Schmid 2011: 219). The number of splinters in a blend can differ: sexploitation contains one splinter, strechno (street techno) contains two, and cablegram3 contains none. Fischer distinguishes between three types of splinter-blends (cf. 1998: 38):

- In abbreviation blends, the syllabic onset of one word is retained, while the onset of another one is lost: geep (goat and sheep). The first word looks as if it has been abbre- viated. - In bisyllabic blends, the initial syllables of two base words are combined: sanpro (san- itary protection). The syllables of the blend as well as the base words often resemble each other in form. This may result in alliteration and assonance. - In polysyllabic blends, several syllables of base words are combined: camcorder (cam- era and recorder). The initial and the final part of two bases are put together.

Blends have become an important word-formation pattern since the middle of the 20th century (cf. Fischer 1998: 34). A reason for this might be that blends sometimes are produced coinci- dently as a nonce-formation4 and often contain ambiguous and humorous meaning. Newspa- pers, magazines and advertising utilised this feature and helped to spread it across the countries (cf. Fischer 1998: 34).

3.1.2. Compounding An easy definition of a compound word is delivered by the BBC British Council: “A compound word is made up of other words” (2008: online). Plag uses a similar definition, but only to prove that compound words cannot be regarded as that simple (cf. 2003: 133). Instead of getting lost

3 The precise word-formation pattern of the word cablegram (cable and telegram) is called a clipped compound. According to Fischer, clipped compounds such as cablegram count as blends, because compounds are usually composites of free lexical morphemes (-gram is no free lexical morpheme) and the clipping only serves as a subordinate process to enable the merging of the two words cable and telegram (cf. 1998: 35). 4 A nonce word is a strongly contextual word form that helps to term new or unknown objects or actions. Nonce words occur when speakers creatively apply word formation rules on units of their mental lexicon (cf. Bußmann 2008: 6). The resulting spread and social application of nonce words in a speaking community are main conditions for them to become neologisms. 7 in explanations, he presents a formula that exemplarily shows the basic structure of an English compound: [X Y]Y (cf. 2003: 137). The variable X in square brackets stands for the compound’s modifier which can be a root, word or phrase. The following variable Y connected to X stands for the compound’s head which can be a root or a word. The inferior variable Y behind the square brackets stands for the grammatical properties of the compound’s head (e.g. word class and number). Also, according to this formula, the compound word’s head bears all the grammatical information. The compound in general has a binary structure: its constituents are always linked to a second one (cf. Plag 2003: 134).5 Comparing the formula with the definition given at the beginning of this section, a compound word does not merely consist of other words. It consists of roots, words, or even phrases. Regarding the morphosemantic structure, a compound is always a binary combination of a head and its modifier.

Concerning the head’s position, six kinds of compounds can be differentiated (cf. Plag 2003: 145-147):

- The semantic head of an endocentric compound is inside the compound (e.g. book cover). - If the semantic head is outside the compound it is called an exocentric compound (e.g. pickpocket). - Possessive pronouns denote an entity that is characterised by the property expressed by the compound (e.g. greenback). - In copulative compounds, no member is semantically prominent, but both members equally contribute to the meaning of the compound (e.g. singer-songwriter). - Appositional compounds refer to an entity that is characterised by both members of the compound (e.g. poet-translator). - If the noun following the compound allows both readings, the compound is in principle ambiguous and therefore called a coordinative compound (e.g. scientist-philosopher crew).

According to Plag, “compounding is the most productive type of word-formation processes in English” (2003: 132). A reason for this might be the far-reaching pattern of compound formation (see formula above). They “systematically combine words of certain categories, they

5 For example, a teaching award is an award given to teachers. Even longer compounds have a binary structure: a teaching award recipient is a person that receives a teaching award. The length of a compound does not influence the binary structure at all. 8 display certain predictable stress patterns, and they are interpreted in principled ways” (Plag 2003: 162). In other words, they are relatively easy to create, use and comprehend.

3.1.3. Derivation and Affixation This subsection mainly focuses on the derivational process of affixation. Morphological derivation itself means – as the word implies – deriving new words out of already existing ones. Affixation is a special kind of derivation that uses so-called affixes to form new words.

An affix is a mostly bound morpheme (although there are also affixes that are free morphemes) that can change a base word’s meaning and syntactic category when being added to it (cf. Plag 2003: 86). There are three kinds of affixes depending on their position in relation to the word’s base morpheme (cf. Plag 2003: 85):

- Prefixes appear in the front of the base morpheme, e.g. return. - Infixes are positioned within the base word (although there are only few examples for the English language that are considered elements of spoken language), e.g. kanga- bloody-roo. - Suffixes appear behind the base morpheme, e.g. readable.

As already mentioned, adding affixes can change a word vastly. It can change its syntactic category (e.g. nominal, verbal and adjectival suffixes, plural suffixes, gender-specific suffixes) or even its meaning (prefixes are more known to do so, e.g. de- or recolonising).

The fact that suffixes tend to be linked to whole word classes and no individual words and prefixes have almost no visible restrictions of binding to bases leads to the assumptions that affixes in general are highly productive. Adding an affix may create a new word with a new meaning. In the German language, affixes help to integrate foreign words into the own language system. It is only required to know the base word (e.g. cool) and the respective affixes of a language and it is possible to expand the vocabulary: cooler, coolest, uncool, cooling.

Regarding neologisms, affixation is mostly seen as a feature of other word-formation processes that affect the original word, e.g. clipping: janny (janitor). “A suffix -y/-ie is often attached to them which then functions as a diminutive. It then conveys familiarity and fits into the stylistic level of clippings” (Fischer 1998: 43).

3.1.4. Clipping Also known as stump-word or truncation, clippings are the final word-formation pattern that will be examined throughout this paper.

A clipping is defined as the shortening of a single word, whereas the shortening and subsequent combining of two words results in a blend. Since words and phrases can sometimes not be distin- guished clearly (the two being opposite poles on a continuum), a distinction between clipping and blend may also be difficult (Fischer 1998: 39). Regarding this, clipping seems to be strongly connected to the word-formation pattern of blending. The fact that it is considered a blend after two clipped words are being compounded (see chapter 3.1.1.) makes the appearance that clipping is a subordinate word-formation pattern – or at least a temporal stage of evolution a word undergoes during word-formation. This might be a reason why it is so difficult to distinct clippings or blends from one another.

Since clipping means a shortening of an already existing word, Fischer proposes to examine clippings according to the position of a word where the shortening took place. There are three possibilities (cf. Fischer 1998: 41):

- Leaving out the first part of the original word is called initial clipping, e.g. shuttle (space shuttle). - Leaving out the last part of the original word is called final clipping, e.g. bro (brother). - Sometimes, initial clipping and final clipping happen simultaneously, e.g. mersh (com- mercial).

Admittedly, ‘first part’ and ‘last part’ are no precise descriptions of where exactly a clipping affects a word. It can be said that clippings are phonologically and graphically motivated. The reason for this might be that, in connected speech, “the initial sounds of a word determine the sounds which follow” (Fischer 1998: 42). Nevertheless, it is often stated that the formation of clippings cannot be predicted (cf. Adams 1973: 135, Bauer 1983: 233).

As already mentioned, is difficult to distinct clippings from blends – or even abbreviation. Fischer argues that, to draw a distinct line between clippings and abbreviations, clippings are read orthoepically while abbreviations are not (cf. 1998: 40).

The distinction between a clipping and a blend is more complex and correlates with mor- phosemantical aspects:

If the base form consists of more than one word, it must be determined whether it can be viewed as a word unit or as a phrase. If the former case results in the description results in the description of a new concept, the shortening is a blend, cf. ballute (balloon + parachute), floatel (float + hotel) with the clippings bubble (magnetic bubble) and cable (cable television). In the latter case, a clipping is involved if only the initial or final part (and not the intermediate part) of the base is shortened. 10

Conversely a blend is formed if there is clipping at more than one place and/or there is overlap. Therefore, drama-doc (drama-documentary) is a clipping, and des res (desirable residence) is a blend. Apart from this distinction, the meaning of the clipping generally corresponds to the meaning of the base, although the stylistic level may vary. In comparison, the meaning of a blend may deviate from the meaning of its base form (Fischer 1998: 40). Because of their shortness and resemblance to already existing word elements, clippings are useful for new word-formation (cf. Fischer 1998: 43). Their usage is not linked to any social field which underlines the productivity of the word-formation pattern.

3.2. Neologisms By looking at the term’s origin (Greek néos ‘new’, lógos ‘word’), its meaning should be self- explanatory. Nevertheless, calling a neologism simply a ‘new word’ is too unspecific and too blurry – it raises questions like: What is considered as ‘new’? How in general are neologisms characterised?

JOHN ALGEO regards neologisms as words and word combinations that have not been added to general dictionaries of Standard English (cf. 1991: 2). Words must reach a certain frequency to be added into a dictionary. The problem with Pokémon names is that they are usually not part of any dictionary – one exception might be the Pokémon figurehead, Pikachu. The integration of words into a dictionary therefore does not seem not be a sufficient criterion for calling a word a ‘neologism’.

HADUMOD BUSSMANN defines neologisms as newly introduced or newly used verbal expres- sions that are already lexicalised and embedded into the common language use of society (cf. 2008: 474). Nevertheless, the speakers consider these termini as ‘new’ and therefore mark them stylistically (cf. Bußmann 2008: 474). This means that neologisms are no nonce words: they are not spontaneously created by the speakers who then only use them in one specific situation. Within a community of speakers, they are widely accepted and established.

Bußmann differentiates between three forms of how neologisms can be developed (cf. 2008: 474):

- based on already known lexical material e.g. bumf (bum fodder ‘toilet paper’), - through various forms of loaning e.g. angst (German origin), - through a metaphorical meaning transmission e.g. brainwash.

Since Pokémon names are based on already existing English vocabulary, loaning will not be examined in this paper. Nevertheless, metaphorical meaning transmission from the Japanese origin to English might apply.

Tulloch points out that words can count as neologisms “whether or not the general public was made aware of the word or sense” (1991: v). She adds that “a new word is any word, phrase or meaning that came into popular use in English or enjoyed a vogue during the eighties or early nineties” (1991: v). The term ‘new’ is very unprecise; the date of a word’s first emergence does not always stand for the institutionalisation and its spread (cf. Fischer 1998: 3).

In fact, Fischer regards neologisms most precisely. She argues that, regarding the date of the term’s first quotation, “one needs to include those words which a large number of speakers are not yet familiar with” (1998: 3). She further states that “a neologism is a word which has lost its status of a nonce-formation but is still one which is considered new by the majority of members of a speech community” (1998: 3). Regarding the high numbers of approaches to define neologisms, Fischer decided to gradually estimate whether a word would rather count as a neologism or rather not. She therefore offers different criteria that should be regarded (cf. 1998: 4):

- availability (retrieval of words, i.e. how fast the word comes to mind when the situation calls for it), - familiarity (subjective impression of the word, i.e. the function of its frequency of oc- currence in its history), - learnability (ease or difficulty of learning the new word), - frequency (range, i.e. number of texts the word occurs in), - coverage (contexts of particular topics of discourse).

Fischer admits that it is mostly the frequency and the coverage that are relevant to include a neologism into a dictionary (cf. 1998: 4).

Regarding the Pokémon video game saga, the listed criteria only apply to a certain audience, namely the people who play the video game. This leads to a new perspective on Tulloch’s usage of the word ‘public’. ‘Public’ in case of neologisms means a greater circle of word recipients, e.g. readers of a blog or, as it is the case for the Pokémon video games, also video game players.

In fact, the Pokémon video game world can be regarded as a so-called ‘community of practice’.

The term was coined by ETIENNE WENGER; he defines these communities as “groups of people

12 who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly” (2015: online).

Regarding the players of the Pokémon video games, they must not necessarily play the games alone. The older versions of the video games enabled them to trade the Pokémon from their games with Pokémon from other players – or even battle against each other – via cable connection. Since the year 2005, players could also play with or against each other over long distances with the help of the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. The access to the program only required a USB connector that had to be plugged into the PC to connect the game to the internet. This boosted the frequency and intensity of exchange between the players. To enhance the exchange between the parties, Nintendo Wi-Fi-Connection had been gradually replaced by Pokémon Global Link in 2011. The new software eased the connection to a global server where millions of players could, from this day forward, connect with each other within seconds. The latest game versions, Pokémon Sun and Moon, which have been released in November 2016 shipped 10 million units worldwide within a week and 14.69 million copies sold worldwide by the end of the year 2016 (cf. Minotti 2016: online, Macy 2017: online, Sarkar 2017: online). This means that a total number of 14.69 million players could potentially interfere with each other online – an unbelievably large community of practice.

For a member of a community of practice it is vital to share the same vocabulary and terminology with the rest of the community – e.g. slang words, codenames, names of places and persons, and – of course – the names of the Pokémon they are trading, or even battling with.

Regarding that the Pokémon community of practice is an independent speech community that is not necessarily bound to a certain nation or culture – the players just have to use a version of the game in the same language. Within this community of practice, Fischer’s criteria can be easily applied, and leads to the result that, within the community, Pokémon names are no neologisms:

1) When speaking about a certain Pokémon, there is hardly a way to use synonyms. The only situation where speakers paraphrase the name of a creature is when it comes to a tip-of-the-tongue problem (Bulbasaur – the Pokémon with the bulb on its back). 2) Pokémon names must be familiar as soon as players start to play against each other. They need to know the terminology to know the differences between the Pokémon to choose the right tactics to win.

3) The game developers have added word-formation strategies into the video game that will be discussed in chapter 4. It makes it easier for (new) users to keep in mind the Pokémon names more easily. 4) The Pokémon names occur in every video game. Also, they are used in online forums that are dedicated to the video game that focus on trading and competitive battling strategies where Pokémon names are obligatory to understand what other players are discussing about. 5) Among the community of practice, the contexts (except the video game) where Poké- mon names are used is widely covered: trading card games, websites, a TV series, and even comic-like magazines called mangas.

According to Fischer’s criteria and within the community of practice, Pokémon names are no neologisms anymore. The time when the names were introduced they would hold the status of neologisms, but after time has passed and fan franchise supported the reception of the concept of Pokémon, the members created a ‘fan world’ where Pokémon is treated like an everyday topic.

Nevertheless, people who do not belong to this community of practice would be unfamiliar with the video game world of Pokémon. Contrarily to the community members, they would paraphrase the creatures’ names because there are no synonyms of them. Additionally, they would have to figure out the word-formation processes that hide behind a name to make a connection to their actual appearance. Also, there is nearly no context for them where they can use Poké- mon names except within the Pokémon franchise.

4. The Morphology of English Pokémon Names The developers of the Pokémon franchise give no further explanation on meanings of the Poké- mon names. Figuring out what elements hide behind every name is up to the community that plays the games. As already mentioned, many players of the games are always discussing about the franchise on a meta-level. Multiple websites have been created where players can contribute to their content and start discussions. One of them, Bulbapedia, is a self-declared community- driven website that gives detailed insights into the Pokémon franchise. When it comes to Poké- mon names, members discuss about possible meanings that are then published on this website. The process of discussing possible meanings takes time and is one of the reason why this paper only focuses on the first 151 Pokémon: enough time has passed to analyse the morphological

14 elements of the names. The website serves as the source for the Pokémon names’ elements that make up the corpus examined in this paper.

To understand the relationship between Pokémon names and their appearance, regarding the triangle of reference by Ogden and Richards (1923) gives detailed insights. The triangle underlines the authors’ hypothesis that language has an influence upon thought. It describes a relationship between a symbol, a reference and a referent. The symbol is an utterance made by the speaker. The reference is both the speaker’s and the listener’s idea and/or interpretation of the utterance. The referent is an object that is linked to both idea and utterance that exists in the extralinguistic world. The relationship between a symbol and the referent the may be direct or indirect. Regarding Pokémon names, Ogden’s and Richard’s triangle can be explained the following:

[Bulbasaur’s] appearance looks like a green reptile with a bulb on its back. Its name also means a bulbous dinosaur or a reptile which has a bulb on its body. In this context, the word bulb refers to a part of a plant which has round shape. In Bulbasaur’s appearance, its bulb is the green and round thing on its back which refers to its grass type. So, the direct relation is found between Bulbasaur’s appearance and name (Himmawati/Maulana 2016: 47). In this case, a direct relation between the Pokémon name Bulbasaur and the Pokémon’s appearance can be discovered, though this is only possible due to the linguistic knowledge of the reader/listener. He/she must apply familiar word-formation pattern to find out that this Poké- mon is reptile-like (-saur) and has a bulb (Bulba-) on its body.

Figure 1. Triangle of reference by Ogden and Richards (1923) at the example of Bulbasaur.

An indirect relationship between symbol and referent can be found while looking at the name Ivysaur:

This Pokémon is based on a [four-legged] dinosaur or [reptile] with a bud of flower on its back although its name is from the word ivy. Ivy is a kind of vine vegetation which climbs and covers the surface of the wall or a tree. Some of its kind is identified poisonous. The word ivy does not represent

Ivysaur’s appearance since the plant on its back looks like the bud of a flower. However, ivy can represent a plant, which can indicate its grass type. (Himmawati/Maulana 2016: 47, italics added). With the help of word-formation patterns, one can discover how a Pokémon looks like. This procedure also works vice-versa, as Kawahara and Kumagai prove (cf. 5): as a part of an ex- periment, students had to find names for made-up Pokémon that were shown to them. It turned out that they used word-formation patterns to form them (mainly prefixation).

4.1. Occurring Word-formation Patterns The examination of the corpus showed that, often, there is more than one word-formation pattern applied to one Pokémon name, e.g. the name Caterpie consists of a final clipping of the word caterpillar and the diminutive suffix -ie (which underlines that Caterpie has a small size). This means that two word-formation patterns have been applied here: clipping and affixation (a similar example was mentioned in chapter 3.1.3.). An exception would be the word-formation pattern of a clipped compound, because, as already mentioned, the clipping is necessary to enable the words to blend.

Regarding the corpus of 151 Pokémon names, 158 word-formation patterns have been discovered, though not all of them are morphological. Seven names were not affected by any word- formation pattern at all, i.e. the word already exists and does not match Fischer’s criteria for neologisms, e.g. Persian and Golem.

Table 1. The number of word-formation patterns in the corpus, with percentage.

word-formation pattern number percentage Compounding 31 19.6 Blending 82 51.9 derivation/affixation 12 7.6 Clipping 11 7 Other 22 13.9

As can be seen in the table, every word-formation pattern mentioned by Plag and Fischer is represented in the corpus. More than half of the Pokémon names are affected by blending; a total of 31 names is compounded. The number of derivation/affixation and clipping is almost equal. 22 names are affected by other word-formation processes, e.g. shortening, anagrams, and sensational spelling. The latter two could be labelled as graphemic word-formation patterns since the word-formation process is not influenced by morphemic units but by graphemic units, e.g. mixed letters or deliberately wrong-spelled words.

Blending is the largest occurring word-formation pattern. The blended forms can be divided into two groups: clipped compounds and portmanteaus. The first group has already been explained in chapter 3.1.1. and has been applied 23 times. One example for a clipped compound is Metapod. The word consists of a final clipping of metamorphosis, combined with the lexeme pod. The word elements can be semantically explained by looking at Metapod’s appearance: Metapod is a cocoon-like Pokémon which evolves into Butterfree, a Pokémon that looks like a butterfly. Another example is Electabuzz. It consists of the clipped lexeme electric, the forma- tive6 a, and the compounded onomatopoeia buzz.

To create a distinction between the clipped compounds and the other blends, the 59 remaining blends are called portmanteaus. Portmanteaus “blend together shared characteristics of their component words” (Thurner 1993: vii), meaning that no previous clipping is required to connect the components. The “shared characteristics” that Thurner mentions are of phonological or graphemic nature.

Regarding Pokémon names, portmanteaus are the most dominant word-formation pattern and often bear more than just an arbitrary combination of two words that are directly or indirectly related to a Pokémon’s appearance: they have a humorous effect, e.g. Oddish. Oddish is a Poké- mon that looks like a rood with culms on it. The name is a portmanteau of the words odd and radish. The Pokémon’s oddness derives from its ability to walk thanks to its two legs. The word-formation of Pokémon is therefore not only connected to their appearance but also on their behaviour that can – in most cases – solely be derived from the eponymous TV series where Pokémon can be watched as acting characters and not only as a static image.

Derivation appears 12 times in the corpus (10 times as suffixation, once as prefixation and once as zero-derivation). Suffixation appears more often because it is used to nominalise verbs (Scyther), serve as diminutive and thus give information about a Pokémon’s size (Pidgey), or to denote femininity or masculinity (Nidorina, Nidorino). In every case, except nominalisation, suffixation serves as co-word-formation. A reason for this might be, from what has been shown, the suffixes serve mainly as modifiers and are therefore mostly not sufficient to give a name its full meaning. The prefixation is also linked to the denotation of masculinity (Mr. Mime). The zero-derivation (Krabby) nominalises the adjective crabby to a proper name.

6 Formatives are, according to Chomsky/Halle, minimal word elements belonging to the surface structure that determine the word’s abstract underlying form, syntactic functions, and/or semantic properties (cf. 1968: 7). Re- garding word-formation, the syntactic functions are invalid. A word’s underlying form and semantic properties could be linked to the denoted object’s appearance or characteristics. 17

Like derivation/affixation, clipping is the word-formation pattern with the lowest frequency, although various types of clipping, final clipping (Caterpie), initial clipping (Kadabra), and medial clipping (Farfetch’d), are represented. In all cases, clipping has been used to create a new reference out of already existing concepts, e.g. Paras as a clipping of parasite. Farfetch’d as a special case is metaphorically motivated. The duck-like Pokémon carries a bunch of green onions with it. The name derives from a Japanese proverb, translated as “a duck comes bearing green onions”, meaning that something unlikely happened.

Besides the seven examples that are not affected by any word-formation process, there are 22 examples that are not listed as actual word-formation patterns. Nevertheless, they can be regarded as word-formation patterns, they are words that are formed based on existing graphemic or phonemic material:

- 5 anagrams, e.g. Ekans from snake, and - 16 cases of sensational spelling, e.g. Kakuna from cocoon.

Allen Pace Nilsen and Don L. F. Nilsen claim that creative spelling or sensational spelling is a part of modern word-formation, especially in business. Name branding requires the product names to be unique (cf. 2000: 34). It explains why there are so many cases where the Pokémon franchise had applied this strategy.

4.2. Word-formation and Evolution As already mentioned, Pokémon undergo evolution: they change their appearance after reaching a certain training level, after being traded to another trainer, or after being confronted with a special stone that would trigger the evolutionary process.7

The appearances of the evolved Pokémon are not arbitrary. Most of the times they resemble their former self from before the evolution. For example, Ivysaur looks still similar to Bulb- asaur: the green colour, the plant on the back and the reptile-like body. A reason for letting Pokémon of the same evolutionary process look similar might be the fact that, in the early years, the players of the video game were mostly children. The developers of the game used analogies,

7 The correct term for the process during which the creatures change their appearance would be metamorphosis: it would be called evolution if the changes appeared after several generations of reproduction; a Pokémon would keep its appearance for all its life. Metamorphosis, on the other hand, enables a creature to change its appearance multiple times within its lifetime (e.g. insects and amphibians). Hence former linguistic studies regarding the physical change of Pokémon have kept using the term evolution, it will be understood as a synonym of metamorphosis throughout this paper. 18 which helps the young players to remember places, persons and creatures during the game faster and better. While regarding the formerly introduced Pokémon, Bulbasaur and Ivysaur, resemblance between the two can also be discovered in their names: the same suffix, -saur, is a morphological element in each of their names. Out of this reason, analogy cannot only be discovered in the appearance of Pokémon, but also in their names – Bulbasaur share both physical and word-formation features. This chapter will examine the morphological relationship between the Pokémon within the same evolutionary process. Also, through comparing different evolutionary processes, the corpus will be analysed for eventual recurring morphological patterns (e.g. diminutives in names of “first-stage” Pokémon, or other morphemes that mark a certain stage of evolution).

In the corpus, there are 54 groups of Pokémon that undergo evolution. When looking at the appearances of the Pokémon, one will notice that, despite undergone evolution, Pokémon maintain features from their pre-evolutionary stage. After examining the corpus, it stood out that not only physical characteristics are maintained after evolution.

4.2.1. Word-formation of Names within the same Evolutionary Process Concerning the morphological features, there are three different groups of evolutionary processes that can be differentiated:

1. The Pokémon of the same evolutionary process maintain morphological elements after evolving, e.g. Charmander to Charmeleon. 2. The Pokémon of the same evolutionary process change their morphological elements after evolving, e.g. Vulpix to Ninetales. 3. Even though evolved Pokémon change their morphological elements, there is still a semantic link between the evolved Pokémon and its pre-evolutionary stage, e.g. Shellder to Cloyster.

The first group is the largest of all the three groups: 30 evolutionary groups maintain morphological features from pre-evolutionary stages. Although morphological features are maintained word-formation patterns and the position of the relevant morpheme can change, e.g. Bellsprout to Weepinbell (position of bell changes and the endocentric compound becomes a clipped compound).

The second group consists of only two evolutionary groups: Vulpix and Ninetales, and Ge- odude, Graveler and Golem. There is no explanation given why these two groups change their 19 word-formation structure entirely. A reason for this might be that the developers of the franchise wanted to call attention to a visible feature of the evolved Pokémon, e.g. Ninetale’s nine tails.

The remaining 22 evolutionary groups belong to the third group. Although the Pokémon entirely lose their original morphemic features after evolution, there is a semantic connection between the evolved Pokémon and its predecessor. For example, the word structures of Mankey and Primeape do not share any morphemic similarities. Nevertheless, Mankey contains the word monkey, and Primeape contains the word ape. Monkeys and apes are biologically and related and look similar; they belong to the same semantic field. The semantic link between successive evolutionary stages is more or less obvious and perceptible, e.g. Gastly (portmanteau of gas and ghastly), Haunter and Gengar (initially clipped sensational spelling of Doppel- gänger) are loosely connected because all three names bear a mystical and despicable aspect. Sometimes, the succession can also be regarded as a semantic climax, e.g. Rattata (attack) to Raticate (eradicate).

4.2.2. Word-formation of Different Evolutionary Processes Compared At first view, there are few similarities between the Pokémon that belong to different evolutionary processes. As mentioned in the introduction, all Pokémon that evolve change their size, weight and strength. Also, there are smallest morphological units that can determine a word’s semantic properties (cf. footnote 7). This leads to the assumption that Pokémon, even though they are not in the same evolutionary group but in the same stage of evolution, can share certain similarities. Therefore, three groups will be examined:

1. Pokémon in the first stage of evolution (uninvolved). 2. Pokémon in the second stage of evolution. 3. Pokémon in the third stage of evolution (if there is one).

Members of the first group are of small size and, for that reason, mostly weak. There are Pidgey, Caterpie, Dratini and Eevee, who share the diminutive suffixes -ey, -ie, -i and -ee. These suffixes underline the Pokémon’s small size and weakness. Other Pokémon names contain lexemes that have a similar function as Cubone (cub), Bulbasaur (bulb) and Venonat (gnat).

Members of the second group have no significant morphological marker that would be typical for them. Only when compared to their pre-evolutional stage a semantic enhancement can be realized: Poliwhirl (whirl) becomes Poliwrath (wrath), and Machop (chop) becomes Machoke (choke).

Members of the last group have reached their peak of evolution: they are strong and tall. Lex- emes that describe dominance and majesty are typical for Pokémon names that belong to the final stage of evolution: Nidoking (king), Nidoqueen (queen), and Machamp (champ). Apart from this, like in the second group, semantic enhancement towards the pre-evolutionary stage can be observed: Wartortle (war) becomes Blastoise (blast), and Charmeleon (chameleon) becomes Charizard (lizard).

5. Conclusion The examination of the term neologism turned out to be more difficult than originally expected. The word new is not precise enough. If a neologism is simply regarded as a new word, every word must have been a neologism once. The examination of Fischer’s criteria for neologisms lead to the awareness that neologisms are not connected to whole societies, but to communities of practice. At the example of Pokémon, the term lead to difficulties: seen from the perspective of the video game’s players, Pokémon names are no new words – they are more than 20 years old and belong to the basic vocabulary that is needed to be a recognised member of the community of practice. Seen from the perspective of people who do not play the game, every Poké- mon name looks strange, but can derived with the help of popular word-formation patterns. To people who do not play the video game, Pokémon names are neologisms.

The corpus analysis has shown that all the originally introduced word-formation patterns are represented, whereas blends, especially portmanteaus, are most commonly used. Furtherly, the number of compounds is the second largest. Clippings and derivations/affixations are also represented, but they are mostly used as co-word-formation processes.

Apart from the introduced word-formation patterns, other processes occurred that are not known to be used for word-formation. Since sensational spelling and anagrams concern graph- emes rather than morphemes, the two processes should be labelled as graphemic word-formation patterns.

Pokémon names have a strong connection to their appearances. The appearance contributes to the name, what makes it easier for children who play this game to keep in mind the names more efficiently. Vice-versa, the derivation of names from their appearance, regarding the word-formation patterns, is easier.

Another aspect that contributes to the efficient and memorisable word-formation patterns is the relation of the Pokémon names to their own evolutionary stage: Most Pokémon names of the same evolutionary process are semantically and/or morphologically linked, whereas rising evolutionary stages are perceived as enhancements or climaxes. Regarding Pokémon of different evolutionary processes but of same evolutionary stages, many names of first-stage Pokémon and of third-stage Pokémon are morphologically and semantically marked: the names of small and weak Pokémon contain diminutive suffixes or lexemes that underline their small size and/or weakness.

Since only the 151 Pokémon names of the first video game generation have been examined and there are now more than 720 different Pokémon, further research is standing to reason. Over the last 20 years, the age group of the Pokémon video games has changed. Intentionally or not, regarding the game’s latest international competitive battling tournament, Pokémon is now mostly played by adults – maybe even by those who were children when the first Pokémon video game was released. Additionally, the gameplay became more complex, and it stands to reason that the developers changed the word-formation patterns of the new Pokémon names into more complex ones.

6. References 6.1. Printed References Adams, Valerie (1973): An Introduction to Modern English Word Formation. London: Long- man. Algeo, John (1991): Introduction. In: John Algeo (ed.): Fifty Years Among the New Words. A Dictionary of Neologisms. 1941-1991. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 1-16. Barnhart, Clarence L. (1973): A Dictionary of New English: 1963-1972. Barnhart. Bauer, Laurie (1983): English Word-Formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bußmann, Hadumod (2008): Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft. Stuttgart. Chomsky, Noam (1956): Three Models for the Description of Language. Institute of Radio Engineers. Chomsky, Noam/Halle, Morris (1968): The Sound Pattern of English. New York, NY. Fischer, Roswitha (1998): Lexical Change in Present-day English: A Corpus-based Study of the Motivation, Institutionalization, and Productivity of Neologisms. Tübingen: Narr. Himmawati, Dian Rivia (2016): The relevance between Pokemon name and its appearance. In: Language Horizon. Volume 04/04. University of Surabaya, p. 45-52. Kawahara, Shigeto/Kumagai, Gakuji (2016): Expressing Evolution in Pokemon Names: Exper- imental Explorations. In: PLoS ONE. Tokyo, pp. 1-21. Kawahara, Shigeto/Kumagai, Gakuji/Noto, Atsushi (2016): Sound (Symbolic) Patterns in Pokemon Names: Focusing on Voiced Obstruents and Mora Counts. In: PLoS ONE. Tokyo, p. 1-14. Nilsen, Alleen P./Nilsen, Don L. F. (2000): Language Play in Y2K: Morphology Brought to You by Pokemon. In: Voices from the Middle. Volume 7/4. National Council of Teachers of English, p. 32-37. Ogden, Charles K./Richards, Ivor A. (1923): The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language Upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism. Plag, Ingo (2003): Word-formation in English. Cambridge University Press. Schmid, Hans-Jörg (2011): English morphology and word-formation. An Intoduction. Berlin: Erich Schmidt. Thurner, Dick (1993): Portmanteau dictionary: blend words in the English language, including trademarks and brand names. McFarland & Co. Tulloch, Sarah (1991): The Oxford Dictionary of New Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

6.2. Electronic References BBC British Council (2008): Teaching English: Compound word. URL: https://www.teaching- english.org.uk/article/compound-word. DOA: 06/09/2017.

Jimmy Kimmel Live (2016): What State is This? URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_OHYcqBeE0. DOA: 28/08/2017. McLean, Ste (2014): Phonosemantics – The Meaning of Sounds. URL: https://aperimen- tis.wordpress.com/2014/02/09/phonosemantics/. DOA: 28/08/2017. Macy, Seth G. (2017): Pokémon Sun and Moon pass huge sales milestone in United States. URL: http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/01/19/pokemon-sun-and-moon-pass-huge-sales-milestone. DOA: 23/04/2017. Minotti, Mike (2016): Pokémon Sun and Moon break Nintendo 3DS record with 10 million copies shipped. URL: http://venturebeat.com/2016/11/18/pokemon-sun-and-moon-break-nintendo-3ds-record-with-10-million-copies-shipped/. DOA: 22/04/2017. Sarkar, Samit (2017): Pokémon Sun and Moon’s incredible success means the 3DS’ future is bright. URL: http://www.polygon.com/2017/1/31/14454408/pokemon-sun-moon-sales-nintendo-3ds-future. DOA: 22/04/2017. Wenger, Etienne (2015): Introduction to communities of practice. URL: http://wenger- trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/. DOA: 30/04/2017.

7. Appendix (sent via e-mail)

8. Statement of Authorship Hiermit versichere ich, Oliver Wohlt, (Matrikelnummer: 139255), die vorgelegte Qualifikati- onsarbeit zum Thema The Morphology of Pokémon Names im Rahmen der Lehrveranstaltung Morphology im Modul Advanced Specialization, eingereicht am 11.09.2017, selbstständig ver- fasst zu haben und ausschließlich die angegebenen Quellen und Hilfsmittel verwendet, sowie aus diesen entnommene Gedanken und Formulierungen entsprechend den Guidelines vollum- fänglich gekennzeichnet zu haben. Des Weiteren versichere ich, diese Arbeit weder in dieser noch in modifizierter Form bereits in einer anderen Lehrveranstaltung zum Erwerb eines Leistungsnachweises eingereicht zu haben. Mir ist bekannt, dass eine Arbeit, die nachweislich ein Plagiat gemäß der unten gegebenen De- finition darstellt, als schwerer Verstoß gegen die Prüfungsordnung gewertet und kein Leis- tungsnachweis für die Arbeit bzw. über die Teilnahme an der betreffenden Lehrveranstaltung erteilt wird. Ich bin mir dessen bewusst, dass die Aufdeckung eines Plagiatsfalles dem Prü- fungsamt gemeldet wird und mit dem Ausschluss von der Erbringung weiterer Prüfungsleis- tungen geahndet werden kann.

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Plagiat Unter einem Plagiat versteht man die ungekennzeichnete oder nicht angemessen gekennzeich- nete Übernahme von fremdem geistigen Eigentum – unabhängig von dessen Herkunft, d.h. auch aus dem Internet – in eigene Arbeiten, und zwar einschließlich der Übernahme von Fakten, Argumenten oder spezifischen Formulierungen im Original sowie deren Paraphrasierung oder Übersetzung.