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The Morphology of Pokémon Names

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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 The Morphology of Pokémon Names 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 Register of Illustrations .................................................................................................................... 1 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 Register of Illustrations 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 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 morpholog- ical 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 be- tween 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. 3 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,
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