Brazilian Portuguese Speakers Research Articles

Grammatical impairment in schizophrenia: An exploratory study of the pronominal and sentential domains.

Schizophrenia (SZ) is a severe mental disorder associated with a variety of linguistic deficits, and recently it has been suggested that these deficits are caused by an underlying impairment in the ability to build complex syntactic structures and complex semantic relations. Aiming at contributing to determining the specific linguistic profile of SZ, we investigated the usage of pronominal subjects and sentence types in two corpora of oral dream and waking reports produced by speakers with SZ and participants without SZ (NSZ), both native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. Narratives of 40 adult participants (20 SZ, and 20 NSZ-sample 1), and narratives of 31 teenage participants (11 SZ undergoing first psychotic episode, and 20 NSZ-sample 2) were annotated and statistically analyzed. Overall, narratives of speakers with SZ presented significantly higher rates of matrix sentences, null pronouns-particularly null 3Person referential pronouns-and lower rates of non-anomalous truncated sentences. The high rate of matrix sentences correlated significantly with the total PANSS scores, suggesting an association between the overuse of simple sentences and SZ symptoms in general. In contrast, the high rate of null pronouns correlated significantly with positive PANSS scores, suggesting an association between the overuse of null pronominal forms and the positive symptoms of SZ. Finally, a cross-group analysis between samples 1 and 2 indicated a higher degree of grammatical impairment in speakers with multiple psychotic episodes. Altogether, the results strengthen the notion that deficits at the pronominal and sentential levels constitute a cross-cultural linguistic marker of SZ.

15-item Roland-Morris disability questionnaire for general pain (RMDQ-g): Structural validity and criterion validity on Brazilian patients with chronic pain

BackgroundRoland-Morris Disability Questionnaire for general pain (RMDQ-g) is an instrument adapted to assess disability in patients with pain in any region of the body. ObjectiveTo perform the structural and criterion validity of the RMDQ-g in Brazilian patients with chronic pain. DesignA cross-sectional study. MethodsWe included native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, of both sexes, aged ≥18 years, with pain for at least 3 months in any region of the body. Participants eligible for the study responded to an online form containing personal and clinical data, and assessment instruments. We used the confirmatory factor analysis and considered the following fit indices: chi-square/degree of freedom (DF), comparative fit index (CFI), Tucker-Lewis index (TLI), root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA). In the comparison between models, we considered the structure with the lowest values of the Akaike information criterion (AIC) and sample-size adjusted Bayesian information criterion (SABIC). We assessed criterion validity via Spearman's correlation coefficient (rho) to correlate the long and short versions. ResultsThe study consisted of 297 participants with chronic pain. The main sites of pain were the lumbar region (40.7%), thoracic (21.5%), and neck (19.5%). Mean pain intensity was greater than 5 points. The 24-item long version and the 15-item short version had adequate fit indices (chi-square/DF ≤ 1.77, CFI ≥0.97, TLI ≥0.96, and RMSEA ≤0.05). However, when comparing structures, the short version was the most appropriate because it had the lowest values of AIC (2562.05) and SABIC (2577.72). Criterion validity was acceptable (rho = 0.94) and internal consistency as well (Cronbach's alpha = 0.87). ConclusionThe structural validity and criterion validity of the RMDQ-g with one domain and 15 items is the most appropriate version and should be considered in the clinical environment and in research for measuring disability in patients with chronic pain in any region of the body.

The Maze Task Mobile: Using a Psycholinguistic Experimental Technique as a Pedagogical Tool for Language Learning

This study presents a mobile application of the maze task as a complementary activity for second language learning. The application facilitates conducting linguistic training sessions with the maze task for both pedagogical and experimental purposes. We designed the Maze Task Mobile, used it in English classes with native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, and analyzed student perceptions through an attitude survey. Besides presenting the application in detail, we discuss the results from the survey and from participants’ accuracy in the task highlighting the benefits of this first mobile version of the maze task as well as improvements needed for future development.

A European and Brazilian cross-national investigation into the Portuguese translation of soundscape perceptual attributes within the SATP project

This paper presents a cross-national investigation into the soundscape perceptual attributes translation from English into European and Brazilian Portuguese. It is a study within the scope of a larger project – the Soundscape Attributes Translation Project (SATP) – that involves the translation of the same eight Perceived Affective Qualities (PAQs) into different languages through standard procedures. The structure of the paper reflects two separate moments of data collection and analysis. In the first part, the work done outlines the translation process and the resulting Portuguese-language expressions for the eight PAQs. The translation used a mixed-method approach that involved expert panels and online questionnaires. The second part of the paper outlines the impact of cultural and linguistic factors on soundscape perception and evaluation. This assessment analyzed how Portuguese speakers perceive the eight PAQs of the SATP project and compared it with the results of the English speakers. Additionally, investigations occurred on the differences between the perception of European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese speakers. The study found differences in how individuals from Portuguese-speaking countries describe sounds compared to the original English circumplex soundscape model. The Vibrant, Monotonous, Annoying, and Chaotic PAQs did not correlate as in the original English model, indicating the need for further investigation. However, the Pleasant and Calm PAQs had no issues in all analyses and shall remain with their initial translations. These findings have important implications for soundscape developments related to standardization tools, research methods, and test design in Portuguese-speaking contexts, as well as contributions to the growing body of knowledge on the role of culture and language in soundscape perception and evaluation.

Brazilian Portuguese-Russian (BraPoRus) corpus: automatic transcription and acoustic quality of elderly speech during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract This article presents the Brazilian Portuguese-Russian (BraPoRus) corpus, whose goal is to collect, analyze, and preserve for posterity the spoken heritage Russian still used today in Brazil by approximately 1,500 elderly bilingual heritage Russian–Brazilian Portuguese speakers. Their unique 100-year-old variety of moribund Russian is disappearing because it has not been passed to their descendants born in Brazil. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we remotely collected 170 h of speech samples in heritage Russian from 26 participants (M age = 75.7 years) in naturalistic settings using Zoom or a phone call. To estimate the quality of collected data, we focus on two methodological challenges, automatic transcription and acoustic quality of remote recordings. First, we find that among commercially available transcription programs, Sonix far outperforms Google Transcribe and Vocalmatic on the measure of word error rate (WER). Second, we also establish that the acoustic quality of the remote recordings was adequate for intonational and speech rate analysis. Moreover, this remote method of collecting and analyzing speech samples works successfully with elderly bilingual participants who speak a heritage language different from their dominant societal language, and it can become a new norm when face-to-face communication with elderly participants is not possible.

Differences between stereotypical gender and definitional gender in pronominal antecedent retrieval in Brazilian Portuguese

Together with Alves (2019), this paper is part of a research work dedicated to investigating the role of gender cues in pronominal antecedent retrieval in Brazilian Portuguese. The main aim is to determine whether Principle B structural constraints work as an initial filter in pronominal antecedent retrieval in Brazilian Portuguese, or whether gender cues play a major role at early processing phases since this language has visible redundant morphological markings. It is also examined whether antecedent candidates carrying different gender cues have different weights in memory. In the present work, a comparison between antecedent candidates carrying stereotypical gender and definitional gender was provided. The results of two eye-tracking experiments conducted with native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese showed that gender morphological cues play a role at the very beginning of pronoun resolution processing, and only at a later processing phase, structural constraints of Principle B seemed to help the parser to select the correct antecedent. Like the previous work, the results indicated Principle B structural constraints do not work as an initial filter blocking structurally unacceptable candidates in Brazilian Portuguese; on the contrary, all candidates seemed to be taken into account despite of violating Principle B structural constraints. Similarly to the previous work, masculine antecedent candidates were preferable to be retrieved by memory in comparison to feminine candidates. Moreover, the results indicated that candidates with definitional gender rather than stereotypical gender are preferable to be retrieved by memory since the former is lexically specified, while the latter relies on probabilities based on world knowledge inferences.

On the speaker discriminatory power asymmetry regarding acoustic-phonetic parameters and the impact of speaking style.

This study aimed to assess what we refer to as the speaker discriminatory power asymmetry and its forensic implications in comparisons performed in different speaking styles: spontaneous dialogues vs. interviews. We also addressed the impact of data sampling on the speaker's discriminatory performance concerning different acoustic-phonetic estimates. The participants were 20 male speakers, Brazilian Portuguese speakers from the same dialectal area. The speech material consisted of spontaneous telephone conversations between familiar individuals, and interviews conducted between each individual participant and the researcher. Nine acoustic-phonetic parameters were chosen for the comparisons, spanning from temporal and melodic to spectral acoustic-phonetic estimates. Ultimately, an analysis based on the combination of different parameters was also conducted. Two speaker discriminatory metrics were examined: Cost Log-likelihood-ratio (Cllr) and Equal Error Rate (EER) values. A general speaker discriminatory trend was suggested when assessing the parameters individually. Parameters pertaining to the temporal acoustic-phonetic class depicted the weakest performance in terms of speaker contrasting power as evidenced by the relatively higher Cllr and EER values. Moreover, from the set of acoustic parameters assessed, spectral parameters, mainly high formant frequencies, i.e., F3 and F4, were the best performing in terms of speaker discrimination, depicting the lowest EER and Cllr scores. The results appear to suggest a speaker discriminatory power asymmetry concerning parameters from different acoustic-phonetic classes, in which temporal parameters tended to present a lower discriminatory power. The speaking style mismatch also seemed to considerably impact the speaker comparison task, by undermining the overall discriminatory performance. A statistical model based on the combination of different acoustic-phonetic estimates was found to perform best in this case. Finally, data sampling has proven to be of crucial relevance for the reliability of discriminatory power assessment.

Phonological influence in bilectal speakers of Brazilian and European Portuguese

Aims and objectives:This article investigates naturalistic acquisition of a second dialect (D2), comparing the global accent of speakers of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) exposed to European Portuguese (EP), either as children or as adults (early vs late bilectals). The focus is on the predicted advantage of an early age of onset of the D2, as well as possible crosslinguistic influence from the D2 onto the first dialect (D1).Design and methodology:The study is an Accent Rating Task, where 50 raters judged the global accent of 30 BP speakers living in Portugal (15 early + 15 late bilectals), who were recorded in both BP and EP modes. Using a 6-point Likert-type scale, the raters judged whether the speakers sounded Brazilian or Portuguese and also indicated how certain they were about their judgment.Data and analysis:The data consisted of two 10-second audio snippets from each speaker, one in BP and the other in EP mode (altogether 60 items). In addition, there were 10 control items produced by native BP and EP speakers. Several mixed-effects models compared the target groups to each other and to the monolectal controls.Findings and conclusions:Both the early and late bilectals were rated as Brazilian in BP mode, but the degree of rater certainty was significantly lower for early than for late bilectals, which was again lower than for BP monolectals. In EP mode, early bilectals were perceived as Portuguese (though the raters were less certain than when rating EP monolectals), while late bilectals were judged as Brazilian.Originality:The study adds to the novel but increasing body of research on speakers of two closely related varieties.Significance and implications:This research illustrates that bilectalism displays a number of similarities with bilingualism, specifically that there may be significant effects of age of onset of the D2.

The Dance of Pauses in Poetry Declamation

In poetry declamation, the appropriate use of prosody to cause pleasure is essential. Among the prosodic parameters, pause is one of the most effective to engage the listeners and provide them with a pleasant experience. The declamation of three poems in two varieties of Portuguese by ten Brazilian Portuguese (BP) speakers and ten European Portuguese (EP) speakers, balanced for gender, was used as a corpus for evaluating the degree of pleasantness by listeners from the same language variety. The distributions of pause duration and inter-pause interval (IPI) both varied greatly across the subjects, being the main source of variability and strongly right-tailed. The evaluation of the degree of pleasantness revealed that pause duration predicts degree of pleasantness in EP, whereas IPI predicts degree of pleasantness in BP. Reciters perform a kind of complex “dance”, where sonority between pauses is favored in BP and pause duration in EP.

Experimental evidence of the production of inflected infinitives by Brazilian Portuguese speakers

The Minimalist Program launched by N. Chomsky (1995) inspired reductionist accounts of Control phenomena, which tried to eliminate ‘PRO’ from the theory of grammar, treating it as a trace (copy) of movement (Martin 1996; O’Neil 1997; Hornstein 1999 et seq.). Such movement theories of Control are directly challenged by the use of inflected infinitives in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), as shown in Modesto (2010). Many supporters of the movement theory, however, have denied the empirical argument, making the claim that inflected infinitives “are not natural in BP” (Rodrigues & Hornstein 2013: 307), not belonging to BP’s “core grammar”. This study, then, presents two experiments in which production of nonfinite inflection is implicitly elicited in a pseudoword oral completion task. Participants from different linguistic geographic varieties (the cities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo) heard the pseudoverb in its gerundive form and were then prompted to insert the pseudoverb in a sentence frame that would be compatible with both uninflected and inflected infinitive forms. Our results show 73.3% of participants inflected the infinitive to some degree when indirectly primed to do so, and that 40.9% did so, even when not primed. Results also show that while linearly distant plural markings (on the subject) did not influence behavior, adjacent morphosyntactic plural markings (on secondary predicates, for instance) did slightly increase the probability of inflection. Both priming effects and sensitivity to morphosyntactic context seem to indicate that nonfinite inflection is a productive, albeit variable, feature of BP speakers’ I-grammar.

Evidence of non-selective lexical access to second and third language in unbalanced multilinguals: an N400 study on the processing of interlingual homographs

Bilinguals and multilinguals commonly encounter words in their multiple languages which share some linguistic aspects. Among those are interlingual homographs, or words that have the exact same orthography in two different languages. The current study examined, through a semantic judgment task in English with ERP recording, how multilinguals (speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, English and German) accessed the meanings of interlingual homographs that belonged to their dominant and non-dominant foreign languages compared to a control group of Brazilian Portuguese-English bilinguals. The findings demonstrated that multilinguals were slower to respond to the English-German interlingual homographs as compared to control stimuli (no homographs). The results also demonstrated that, when the interlingual homographs were semantically related to their targets in the non-target language, there were significantly more errors and a higher RT than in unrelated conditions. Additionally, only the bilinguals presented the typical N400 effect for unrelated conditions, suggesting that the co-activation of the non-target language due to interlingual homographs modulated this ERP in the multilingual group. Our results provide support for the Bilingual Interactive Activation plus model and suggest that literature findings on interference between first and second languages also hold for second and third languages.

Nonlinear analysis by phase space reconstruction of healthy elderly voices.

To compare the results of the non-linear acoustic analysis of elderly male and female voices, speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. Recordings of 14 men and 15 women were used. The voices were consensually judged to be vocally healthy by three trained speech therapists. The non-linear acoustic analysis was performed by the Phase Space Reconstruction (PSR) analysis using the Voice Analysis program. A significant difference was observed in the parameter irregularity (p = 0.001) and spacing (p = 0.005), with worse results for the male group. While 93% of male voices presented degrees 2 or 3 of irregularity, these degrees were observed in 53% of female voices. In 78.6% of male voices, medium to large spacing was observed, a fact observed only in 26.7% of women. The results of the non-linear analysis, through the Phase Space Reconstruction, using the CIS Protocol, in the voices of the elderly, showed the best result in terms of the number of curves (four or more). Regarding the irregularity of the tracing, in men, the majority presented grades 2 and 3 and in women, half presented grade 1. Regarding the spacing, 78.6% of the male voices had medium to large spacing, a fact observed only in 26.7% of women.There was a difference between the sexes in the vocal findings of the elderly by the CIS protocol with the PSR, pointing out worse results irregularity and spacing in the male population, which suggests greater vocal aperiodicity in elderly men.

Análise não linear pela reconstrução do espaço de fase de vozes saudáveis de idosos

ABSTRACT Purpose To compare the results of the non-linear acoustic analysis of elderly male and female voices, speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. Methods Recordings of 14 men and 15 women were used. The voices were consensually judged to be vocally healthy by three trained speech therapists. The non-linear acoustic analysis was performed by the Phase Space Reconstruction (PSR) analysis using the Voice Analysis program. Results A significant difference was observed in the parameter irregularity (p = 0.001) and spacing (p = 0.005), with worse results for the male group. While 93% of male voices presented degrees 2 or 3 of irregularity, these degrees were observed in 53% of female voices. In 78.6% of male voices, medium to large spacing was observed, a fact observed only in 26.7% of women. Conclusion The results of the non-linear analysis, through the Phase Space Reconstruction, using the CIS Protocol, in the voices of the elderly, showed the best result in terms of the number of curves (four or more). Regarding the irregularity of the tracing, in men, the majority presented grades 2 and 3 and in women, half presented grade 1. Regarding the spacing, 78.6% of the male voices had medium to large spacing, a fact observed only in 26.7% of women.There was a difference between the sexes in the vocal findings of the elderly by the CIS protocol with the PSR, pointing out worse results irregularity and spacing in the male population, which suggests greater vocal aperiodicity in elderly men.

Translation and cross-cultural adaptation of the anchor points of the Cornell Assessment of Pediatric Delirium scale into Portuguese.

To translate and cross-culturally adapt the Cornell Assessment of Pediatric Delirium anchor points from English to Brazilian Portuguese. For the translation and cross-cultural adaptation of the anchor points, all steps recommended internationally were followed after authorization for use by the lead author. The stages were as follows: translation of the original version into Portuguese by two bilingual translators who were native speakers of the target language, synthesis of the versions, reverse translation by two translators who were native speakers of the source language, review and synthesis of the back-translation, review by a committee of experts and preparation of the final version. The translation and cross-cultural adaptation of the anchor points was conducted in accordance with recommendations. The linguistic and semantic issues that arose were discussed by a committee of judges, with 91.8% agreement, as determined using a Likert scale, after changes by consensus. After reanalysis by the authors, there were no changes, resulting in the final version, which was easy to understand and administer. The translation and cross-cultural adaptation of the anchor points of the Cornell Assessment of Pediatric Delirium scale into Portuguese spoken in Brazil were successful, maintaining the linguistic and semantic properties of the original instrument. The table of anchor points is easy to understand and will be helpful during the assessment of children younger than 24 months using the Cornell Assessment of Pediatric Delirium scale.

Fundamental frequency related parameters in Brazilians with COVID-19.

This study compares fundamental frequency (fo) and fundamental frequency standard deviation (foSD) of COVID-19 patients with the same parameters in the speech of subjects without COVID-19, and verifies whether there is an effect of age and sex in the patient group. Both groups, subjects with and without COVID-19, are formed by Brazilian Portuguese speakers. Speech samples were obtained from 100 patients with mild to severe symptoms of COVID-19, and 100 healthy subjects. A single 31-syllable Portuguese sentence was used as the elicitation material for all subjects. The recordings were divided into four age groups. The acoustic measures were semi-automatically extracted and analyzed by a series of analyses of variance. Patients with COVID-19 present vocal differences in fo-related parameters when compared to healthy subjects, that is, patient voices presented higher fo and foSD with respect to control voices. In addition, for patient voices, there was an age and sex effect on fo SD values. Vocal parameters of women and elderly subjects showed more marked differences in fo-related parameters, indicating that patient voices are higher-pitched and have a higher variation of fo SD. Consequently, fo-related parameters may be tested as vocal biomarkers in the screening of respiratory insufficiency by voice analysis, in patients with severe symptoms of COVID-19.

Translation and cross-cultural adaptation to Brazilian Portuguese of two brief screening tools for at-risk psychosis youth: the Prodromal Questionnaire (PQ-16) and the PRIME-Screen.

Prodromal characteristics of psychosis have been described for more than a century. Over the last three decades, a variety of studies have proposed methods to prospectively identify individuals (and youth in particular) who are at high risk of developing a psychotic disorder. These studies have validated various screening instruments and made them available in several languages. Here, we describe the translation into Brazilian Portuguese and cross-cultural adaptation of two such screening tools - the Prodromal Questionnaire-16 (PQ-16) and the Prevention through Risk Identification, Management, and Education (PRIME)-Screen. Two bilingual native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese translated the questionnaires from English. A native English speaker then performed back-translations into English. These back-translated versions were submitted to the original authors. They provided feedback and later approved the final versions. After translation and cross-cultural adaptation, no items needed to be changed in the adapted PQ-16 and four items were revised in the PRIME-Screen. After the peer-review process, we included two suggestions in the PQ-16 to facilitate use of the tool in our cultural and social contexts. The PRIME-Screen did not need further changes. These new instruments can help screen Brazilian Portuguese-speaking patients who are at risk of psychosis in primary care.

How Word/Non-Word Length Influence Reading Acquisition in a Transparent Language: Implications for Children's Literacy and Development.

Decoding skills are crucial for literacy development and they tend to be acquired early in transparent languages, such as Brazilian Portuguese. It is essential to better understand which variables may affect the decoding process. In this study, we investigated the processes of decoding as a function of age of children who are exposed to a transparent language. To this end, we examined the effects of grade, stimulus type and stimulus extension on the decoding accuracy of children between the ages of six and 10 years who are monolingual speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. The study included 250 children, enrolled from the first to the fifth grade. A list of words and pseudowords of variable length was created, based on Brazilian Portuguese structure. Children assessment was conducted using the computer program E-prime® which was used to present the stimuli. The stimuli were programmed to appear on the screen in a random order and children were instructed to read them. The results indicate two important moments for decoding: the acquisition and the mastery of decoding skills. Additionally, the results highlight an important effect of the extent and type of stimuli and how it interacts with the school progress. Moreover, data indicate the multifactorial nature of decoding acquisition and the different interactions between variables that can influence this process. We discuss medium- and long-term implications of it, and possible individual and collective actions which can improve this process.

Predictive Factors of Listeners’ Attitudes Related to Dysphonic Voices in Native Brazilian Portuguese

To verify whether there are differences in the judgments of listeners' attitudes as a function of the presence, severity, and type of vocal deviation, and to identify the predictive factors of listeners' attitudes toward dysphonic voices in Brazilian Portuguese speakers. A sample of CAPE-V sentences was used from 44 subjects of both genders. The samples presented different severities of vocal deviation (general grade - GG) (healthy, mild, moderate, and severe) and different degrees of roughness (GR), breathiness (GB), and strain (GS), characterized by a perceptual-auditory judgment performed by speech therapists. The samples were presented to 152 listeners of both genders who performed the judgment of 12 attitudes inserted in a semantic differential scale previously validated for this study. Here, we used a Logistic Regression Model. There was no association between listener's gender and the judgment of attitudes. Subjects with vocal quality deviation were judged more negatively in relation to vocally healthy individuals. We observed that higher the GG, higher the negative judgment of listeners in relation to the speakers. Listeners judged breathy and strained voices as more negative. In the general model for female and male voices, the increase in GB and GG reduced the chance of a voice being evaluated positively by 16 and 20%, respectively. For female voices, GB and GS reduced the chance of a female voice being evaluated positively by 36 and 19%, respectively. GG reduces the chance of a male voice being evaluated positively by 46%, while GR increases the chance of a male voice being judged positively by 62 %. There is an association between the presence, severity, and type of vocal deviation and listeners' attitudes. We identified a predictive model of listeners' attitudes related to dysphonic voices among Brazilian Portuguese speakers. In general, GG and GB were predictors of negative attitudes toward listeners. GB and GS were predictors of negative attitudes toward female voices. The GG is a predictor of negative attitudes toward male voices, while the GR increases the chance of positive judgments.

Productive Vocabulary Knowledge Predicts Acquisition of Spanish DOM in Brazilian Portuguese-Speaking Learners

Differential object marking (DOM) in Spanish refers to the overt morphological marking of certain direct objects. Specifically, this a-marking of direct objects is driven by animacy and usually precedes human objects. Other features such as specificity and definiteness matter to a lesser extent. This direct object a-marking has also been attested in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), but with more restrictions than in Spanish. Thus, BP is typically not considered a DOM language. This article discusses the acquisition of DOM in second language (L2) Spanish among BP speakers. Seventy-four adult Brazilians with various levels of L2 proficiency completed three experimental tasks: elicited production, acceptability, and productive vocabulary knowledge, which measures productive lexical knowledge and was designed specifically to assess this language pair. We analyzed our data to uncover the knowledge that BP-speaking L2 learners of Spanish possess of DOM and to determine whether their knowledge of DOM can be predicted by their L2 productive vocabulary knowledge. Results indicate that the learners acquire the animacy-driven nature of Spanish DOM, both in their productive and receptive grammatical knowledge, as their productive vocabulary knowledge increases. The L2 learners present different acquisitional outcomes yet those with deeper productive vocabulary knowledge show a stronger animacy-driven distribution of DOM in Spanish.

How Russian speakers express evolution in Pokémon names: an experimental study with nonce words

Abstract Sound symbolism, systematic and iconic relationships between sounds and meanings, is now a topic that is very actively explored by linguists, psychologists and cognitive scientists. As a new research strategy to study the nature of sound symbolic connections across different languages, a number of scholars have started using Pokémon names, a research paradigm that is now dubbed “Pokémonastics.” The previous Pokémonastics studies have experimentally explored how the evolution status is symbolically expressed by native speakers of English, Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese. Building on these studies, the current experiment examined the sound symbolic knowledge of Russian speakers, and found that they are more likely to associate large, post-evolution Pokémon characters with names containing voiced obstruents than with names containing voiceless obstruents, and that they are also more likely to associate post-evolution characters with names containing [a] than with names containing [i]. The experiment also revealed that Russian speakers are less likely to associate post-evolution characters with names having labial consonants than with names having coronal or dorsal consonants. Overall, the current results show that Russian speakers generally have knowledge of sound symbolic associations that is similar to that of English, Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese speakers, suggesting that some sound symbolic patterns hold robustly across multiple languages.