The influence of linguistic experience and connotative meanings on the perceived creativity of German personal name blends

An experimental study

Bibliographic Data

ID17805151
AuthorsMilena Belosevic (0000-0003-4300-1372, corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume19
Issue1
Pages1-25
Publication date2026-03-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueWORD Structure (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1750-1245 • E-ISSN: 1755-2036
PublisherEdinburgh University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3366/word.2026.0259
OpenAlexW7140192778
LanguageEN
References cited47

Personal name (PN) blends (e.g., Merkozy from (Angela) Merkel and (Nicolas) Sarkozy) are often defined as creative ( Beliaeva 2022 ), yet the factors shaping their perceived creativity remain underexplored. This especially holds for aspects beyond the formal properties of PN blends and their name constituents. Adopting a usage-based approach ( Kemmer 2010 ), this study investigates how positive and negative connotative meanings and linguistic experience influence the perceived creativity of German PN blends. Connotative meanings were modeled using the name connotation profile ( Mehrabian 1997 ), modified with sentiment analysis and word embeddings. Perceived creativity was operationalized along two dimensions: originality and communicative success, i.e., the recoverability of name constituents and the understanding of connotative meanings. In a rating experiment, we tested two hypotheses: (H1) stronger connotative meanings increase perceived originality but decrease recoverability of blend constituents; (H2) greater linguistic experience decreases perceived originality but increases recoverability. Statistical analysis confirmed H1 only for originality, while no effect for H2 could be detected in our dataset. The study contributes to understanding of semantic creativity in name-based word-formation, highlights the role of connotative meanings in perceived creativity, and demonstrates how natural language processing methods can model the semantic properties of experimentally elicited PN blends

Connotation · Creativity · German · Judgement · Operationalization · Originality · Action Observation and Synchronization · Creativity in Education and Neuroscience · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition

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