The Meaning of "Rhyme"

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Oct 2, 2006, at 7:46 AM, John Baker wrote:

>         Well, Weingarten is a humor columnist (and a pretty good
> one, I
> would say, though he isn't to everyone's taste).  I don't think he
> would
> have a problem with ribald comment.  I'll pass on the "assonate"
> suggestion.
>
> John Baker
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
> Behalf
> Of Jonathan Lighter
> Sent: Monday, October 02, 2006 10:34 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: The Meaning of "Rhyme"
>
> Assonance is traditionally considered to be an "alternative to rhyme,"
> in the words of M-W, but I've heard it called a "form of rhyme" as
> well.

the standard usage of the technical terms is that for words with only
one accented syllable, assonance involves identity of the vowel of
this syllable, and (full) rhyme is "assonance plus": identity of this
vowel and everything that follows it.  for words with more than one
accented syllable, matters are murkier, though for rhyme it's usual
to look only at the last accented vowel ("participate" and "state"
then rhyme); for assonance the question is whether the syllable with
the main accent is the one that counts (so that "sit" assonates with
"participate"), or the last accented syllable is, or either can count.

but it's customary to talk only about *words* rhyming or assonating.
weingarten's talk of syllables rhyming is already problematic, but
then it turns out that he means only that these syllables have
identical vowels, not that the syllables are identical in vowel and
offset.  even the term "assonate" is a bit odd here.  the way to ask
the question clearly would have been:

The middle vowel of the word "piano":
a. Is (the same as) the vowel of "stare."
b. Is (the same as) the vowel of "bat."
etc.

a side point: once you get people actually listening to what they
say, you'll start getting people who have the phoneme ash in both
"piano" and "bat" pointing out that these vowels are not really the
same -- and indeed they aren't, since the one in "piano" is
significantly longer than the one in "bat" (and the vowels might also
differ in quality).  suddenly people are detecting subphonemic
details (triggered by context).

of course, the poll suffers from all of the usual problems of using
reference words.  one pronunciation of "piano" has /a/ in the middle
syllable.  i'm guessing that weingarten is trying to get at this one
by using the reference word "on" -- but i'm a non-merger and have /O/
rather than /a/ in "on"!

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)

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