Simulointisanat

Simulointisanat are artificially created words used in linguistic and language-technology research to simulate real vocabulary while controlling variables. The term is Finnish, combining simulointi 'simulation' and sanat 'words'. In studies they serve as controlled stimuli for experiments on phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and language processing.

Design and properties: they are typically constructed to follow Finnish phonotactics and morphology, yet remain non-existent in standard language. They are chosen to avoid real-word biases and may be given meanings or used as placeholders in sentences to study processing or learning.

Applications: in psycholinguistics, they test how speakers acquire and recognize novel forms; in computational linguistics and speech technology, they provide clean evaluation data for models and TTS systems.

Design considerations include ensuring distinctness from existing words, controlled length, balanced phoneme distribution, and preventing accidental matching with real terms.

Relation to nonce words: simulointisanat are related to nonce or pseudo-words, but are often discussed with emphasis on controlled design in Finnish-language research. See also nonce word, pseudo-word, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics.