An experiment showed that Japanese speakers’ judgement of Pokémons’ evolution status on the basis of nonce names is affected both by mora count and by the presence of a voiced obstruent. The effects of mora count are a case of counting cumulativity, and the interaction between the two factors a case of ganging-up cumulativity. Together, the patterns result in what Hayes (2020) calls ‘wug-shaped curves’, a quantitative signature predicted by MaxEnt. I show in this paper that the experimental results can indeed be successfully modelled with MaxEnt, and also that Stochastic Optimality Theory faces an interesting set of challenges. The study was inspired by a proposal made within formal phonology, and reveals important previously understudied aspects of sound symbolism. In addition, it demonstrates how cumulativity is manifested in linguistic patterns. The work here shows that formal phonology and research on sound symbolism can be mutually beneficial.

中文翻译：

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声音象征中的 wug 形曲线：以日本神奇宝贝名字为例

一项实验表明，日语使用者根据随机数名称对神奇宝贝进化状态的判断受到莫拉计数和浊音阻塞的存在的影响。莫拉计数的影响是计数累积性的情况，两个因素之间的相互作用是组合累积性的情况。这些模式共同导致了 Hayes (2020) 所说的“wug 形曲线”，这是 MaxEnt 预测的定量特征。我在本文中表明，实验结果确实可以用 MaxEnt 成功建模，而且随机最优性理论面临着一系列有趣的挑战。这项研究的灵感来自于在正式音韵学中提出的一项建议，并揭示了声音象征意义的重要先前未充分研究的方面。此外，它还展示了累积性如何体现在语言模式中。