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A comparison of the variances across the five word lengths of names for each of the three sources, at each of the first four ordinal positions.
Source publication
If authors put words together in ways that can be recognized as wordprints (Hilton, 1990; Morton, 1979; Archer et al., 1997), do they put sounds together in identifiable ways when they invent names? Could they have unique sound prints (phonoprints) as well? This exploratory study compared phonemic patterns of fictional names in the poorly written M...
Context in source publication
Context 1
... the Spalding manuscript names were comparable to the nineteenth-century names in variances of mean probabilities, the patterns of the probability profiles shown in Figure 7 were much less orderly than the patterns in Figures 5 and 6, which showed a clear trend for longer names to be more English like. Figure 8 shows the variances of mean phonotactic probabilities for each of the three sources at each phonemic ordinal position. The pattern of variances for Spalding figure 5 A comparison of the English phonemic probabilities for each word length at each ordinal position, names from the 19 th century. ...
Citations
... Previous research has suggested that Tolkien had his own phonoprint -a tendency to create names using the same phonemes and syllable structures regardless of the languages from which they derived (Smemoe et al. 2014;Wilcox et al. 2013). However, these studies were conducted looking only at phonemes and syllable structures and not names as whole units. ...
... Next, we will examine Tolkien's names as whole units using the same IBM name recognition software that is used in airports. Wilcox et al. (2013) found that names made up by a single author are different from those that appear in natural language contexts. This finding is consistent with the work of Fudge and Shockey (1998) who have shown that languages differ greatly in the syllable structures permitted and in the morphophonological positioning of consonants and vowels within syllables. ...
... This finding is consistent with the work of Fudge and Shockey (1998) who have shown that languages differ greatly in the syllable structures permitted and in the morphophonological positioning of consonants and vowels within syllables. Wilcox et al. (2013) found that Tolkien's patterns were more limited and predictable than names in authentic contexts. However, one drawback of this study was that all the invented names taken from Tolkien's works were examined as a single group. ...
J. R. R. Tolkien claimed to create names based on sound symbolism and invented languages. Previous studies revealed that Tolkien had his own phonoprint (tendency to use the same phonemes repeatedly for character names) regardless of his claims that they reflected different language origins. However, this research examined phonemes and syllables rather than names as whole units. This study compared 183 names from Tolkien’s works and 100 names from the nineteenth Century US Census. The name recognition software linked names with known languages or provided a “generic” category when no match was found. Results showed no significant differences between the generic listings when language groups were compared. It seems Tolkien successfully created unique names, but could not escape his own phonoprint among the generic names. When looking at names from non-generic responses, it appears Tolkien was able to differentiate into three language groups, but not with the precision he claimed.
