Hornecker, Henrik

Mooshammer, Christine

Walch, Marie Christin

Xia, Qiang

English

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The influence of the mother tongue on the perception ofconstructed fantasy languagesChristine Mooshammer, Henrik Hornecker, Marie Christin Walch, Qiang XiaInstitut für deutsche Sprache und LinguistikHumboldt-Universität zu BerlinWhether a language sounds pleasant or not has been investigated in several studies [see e.g.1] and seems to depend on diverse factors such as the knowledge of the language and phonologicalcharacteristics. In the current study we minimize the factor familiarity by testing stimuli from14 different constructed languages, mainly from popular Fantasy and Science Fiction culture.Previous research showed that the intended impressions of conlangs are, at least partly, evokedby the sound structure and not only by the appearance of the speakers, their disposition or specialsound effects [2]. Most conlangs are tailored towards a Western audience. Therefore we test theuniversality of their phonological design features by an online rating experiment with speakers ofthree unrelated and typologically distinct languages German, Mandarin Chinese and Japanese.The aims of this study are to test whether listeners with different L1 languages rate fictionallanguages differently on various scales and whether these ratings depend on different phonologicalfeatures for participants with different L1. We investigate four groups of features: sonority relatedfeatures, such as the sonority index [3]. More sonorous languages have been rated as more pleasant[1]. The second feature group is based on the syllable structure. Here we assume a positiverelationship with the percentage of open syllables and a negative one with the onset complexity,which might be stronger for Mandarin and Japanese listeners. The third group is related to soundsymbolism. Sounds produced in the back of the mouth are supposed to be less pleasant [4, 5]. Thelast group is ‘otherness’ based on the percentage of unfamiliar allophones per L1 language.Two speakers (m/f) recorded two sentences in each of the following languages: Adûnaic,Atlantean, Dothraki, Fjerdan, Horn, Kesh, Khuzdul, Klingon, Na’vi, Orkish, Quenya, Sindarin,Vulcan, and QUiQuid. These stimuli were recorded in a neutral voice and presented in an onlinerating experiment using an interactive web browser, the Percy platform [6]. Listeners were askedto rate each stimulus on three 7-point Likert scales: good—evil, pleasant—unpleasant, peaceful—aggressive. Afterwards the listeners identified whether they recognised any of the languages. 184participants (85 German, 63 Mandarin, 36 Japanese) completed the experiment. The ratings forthe three scales were averaged.The rating results are presented in the figure below and show clear differences for the L1 ofthe participants. The Elvish languages Quenya and Sindarin are rated most positively by Germanand Japanese L1 speakers. However, Chinese L1 speakers rated Kesh most positively, and Orkishsecond. Klingon, on the other hand, was rated most negatively, independent of the L1. Thecorrelations between the ratings and the phonological characteristics of the stimuli are presentedin the table below. As can be seen the average sonority and related measures do not contributestrongly to the ratings for Mandarin Chinese compared to German and Japanese. Complex onsetsand back articulations have a negative effect for all three languages. The results on non-familiarsounds in each language are rather puzzling. In summary, the results tend to suggest that it is easierto construct a language that sounds universally unpleasant than a pleasing one. Experiments withparticipants from other language families such as Slavic and Romance are needed to confirm thisfirst impression.P&P 18, 6-7 October 2022, BielefeldLicensed under CC BY 4.0doi:10.11576/pundp2022-1061−0.50.00.51.0KLINNAVIHORNDOTHATLAKHUZUIUIFJERADUNORCIVULCSINDKESHQUENLanguageRatingL1 GER CNM JAP German Mandarin JapaneseSonorityIndex 0.33* 0.18 0.35**SonorityIndexCons 0.21 -0.01 0.22PctVowels 0.53*** 0.42** 0.42**PctObstruents -0.57*** -0.34* -0.51***PctObstruentsOfCons -0.45*** -0.20 -0.44***PctOpenSyllables 0.17 0.24 0.04PctOpenNasalSyllables 0.47*** 0.46*** 0.27*PctComplexOnsets -0.43** -0.39** -0.47***PctBackVowOfVow -0.02 0.04 -0.02PctGutturalVelar -0.58*** -0.29* -0.48***PctNonEnglish -0.49*** -0.41** -0.30*PctNonGerman -0.65*** -0.61*** -0.55***PctNonMandarin -0.46*** -0.44*** -0.46***PctNonJapanese -0.42** -0.36** -0.34*Results from ratings (left) and correlations between ratings and phonological characteristics (right)References[1] Susanne M Reiterer, Vita Kogan, Annemarie Seither-Preisler, and Gašper Pesek. Foreignlanguage learning motivation: Phonetic chill or Latin lover effect? Does sound structure orsocial stereotyping drive FLL? In Psychology of Learning and Motivation, volume 72, pages165–205. Elsevier, 2020.[2] Christine Mooshammer, Dominique Bobeck, Erica Conti, Linda Dingfeld, Corinna Egdorf,Gajaneh Hartz, Henrik Hornecker, Saskia Körner, Runzhi Lou, Kierán Meinhardt, Olga Olina,Lucie Petit, Melanie Roy, Katja Sonnert, Hannah Warnemünde, Felicitas Wegmann, andMarie-Theres Weißgerber. Does orkish sound evil? perception and phonology of constructedfantasy languages. In Phonetik und Phonologie 17, 2021.[3] John G. Fought, Robert L. Munroe, Carmen R. Fought, and Erin M. Good. Sonority andclimate in a world sample of languages: Findings and prospects. Cross-Cultural Research,38(1):27–51, 2004.[4] Leonard Bloomfield. A Semasiological Differentiation in Germanic Secondary Ablaut. TheUniversity of Chicago, Chicago, 1909.[5] Ioanna Podhorodecka. Is lamatyave a linguistic heresy? Iconicity in JRR Tolkien’s inventedlanguages. Insistent Images, 5:103, 2007.[6] Christoph Draxler. Percy-an HTML5 framework for media rich web experiments on mobiledevices. In Twelfth Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Associa-tion, 2011.P&P 18, 6-7 October 2022, BielefeldLicensed under CC BY 4.0doi:10.11576/pundp2022-1061

The  influence of the mother tongue on the perception of constructed fantasy languages

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The influence of the mother tongue on the perception of constructed fantasy languages

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