Schedule StuTS 68

This study investigated imperfect rhyme and its phonological and/or phonetic underlying principles. Imperfect rhyme is a poetic phenomenon in which there is at least one phonemic mismatch between two corresponding rhyme domains (example: cup-cut). In this thesis, consonantal mismatches that occurred in imperfect rhyme within Dutch hip hop were analyzed; multiple songs by five different Dutch rappers were phonetically transcribed, yielding 250 consonantal mismatches per rapper. The likelihood of occurrence (rhymability) of the consonantal mismatches was measured by juxtaposing the frequency of occurrence of the mismatch with the phoneme frequency in the data; this rhymability reflected a type of similarity between those consonants that were more likely to mismatch than expected from the individual consonants’ distribution in the data. Whether this similarity is phonological (based on shared features) or phonetic (based on perceptual and acoustic similarity) has been discussed in several past studies on imperfect rhyme as it occurs in English (Holtman 1996; Katz 2015), Japanese (Kawahara 2007) and Romanian (Steriade 2001). The results of the Dutch data showed that shared phonological features of the consonantal mismatches are the most reliable predictor of rhymability of imperfect rhymes, while the frequency of occurrence of some consonantal mismatches and the salience of some features (sonority and voicedness) over others could be explained by referring to perceptual similarity and Dutch phonotactics. An additional variable that was demonstrated to influence the similarity between imperfect rhymes was the type of rhyme employed (subsequence, masculine vs. feminine, and internal vs. end-rhyme). The study yielded a comprehensive analysis of the linguistic implications of this poetic phenomenon and its cross-linguistic similarity as well as its unicity which is informed by (in this case Dutch) language-specific phonological and phonetic facts.

This study investigated imperfect rhyme and its phonological and/or phonetic underlying principles. Imperfect rhyme is a poetic phenomenon in which there is at least one phonemic mismatch between two corresponding rhyme domains (example: cup-cut). In this thesis, consonantal mismatches that occurred in imperfect rhyme within Dutch hip hop were analyzed; multiple songs by five different Dutch rappers were phonetically transcribed, yielding 250 consonantal mismatches per rapper. The likelihood of occurrence (rhymability) of the consonantal mismatches was measured by juxtaposing the frequency of occurrence of the mismatch with the phoneme frequency in the data; this rhymability reflected a type of similarity between those consonants that were more likely to mismatch than expected from the individual consonants’ distribution in the data. Whether this similarity is phonological (based on shared features) or phonetic (based on perceptual and acoustic similarity) has been discussed in several past studies on imperfect rhyme as it occurs in English (Holtman 1996; Katz 2015), Japanese (Kawahara 2007) and Romanian (Steriade 2001). The results of the Dutch data showed that shared phonological features of the consonantal mismatches are the most reliable predictor of rhymability of imperfect rhymes, while the frequency of occurrence of some consonantal mismatches and the salience of some features (sonority and voicedness) over others could be explained by referring to perceptual similarity and Dutch phonotactics. An additional variable that was demonstrated to influence the similarity between imperfect rhymes was the type of rhyme employed (subsequence, masculine vs. feminine, and internal vs. end-rhyme). The study yielded a comprehensive analysis of the linguistic implications of this poetic phenomenon and its cross-linguistic similarity as well as its unicity which is informed by (in this case Dutch) language-specific phonological and phonetic facts.

Info

Day: 2020-11-20
Start time: 12:45
Duration: 00:30
Room: Ruqaiya Hasan
Track: Phonetics and Phonology
Language: en

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