21. Phonotactics
III
(with rhyming dictionary)
Note: Make sure that you have the Lucida Sans Unicode font installed in your computer so that the IPA
symbols will display correctly.
To do the chapter 4 exercises of the Ladefoged text, we need to find words with
certain endings or rhymes, i.e. nucleus + coda. A regular dictionary is arranged
alphabetically, according to the order of letters starting from the beginning of the word.
A rhyming dictionary matches the last part of a word to find rhyming words. For two
words to rhyme, they should share the same vowel in their final stressed syllable, and all
sounds after this vowel must be the same as well. A rhyming dictionary can make it
easier for us to find words ending in certain specified sounds.
Here we will throw in a few relevant and hopefully interesting literary notions and
terms: single syllable rhymes like mat and pat are called masculine rhyme; rhymes of a
stressed plus unstressed syllable, e.g. middle and riddle, are called feminine rhyme;
three-syllable or trisyllabic rhyme is called triple rhyme, e.g. practical and
tactical (this kind of rhyme is usually used for comic effect); and a rhyme in which
at least one of the rhymes extends over more than one word is called mosaic rhyme, e.g.
pneumonia and phone ya. We are mainly interested in syllable structure and thus
masculine rhyme; but these literary terms for types of rhyme are useful ones to know.
Below follows a link to a free downloadable rhyming dictionary with over 100,000
words (946K) from a company called AnalogX (AnalogX develops and makes available
lots of interesting audio-related freeware – check their other offerings), called simply
Rhyme:
http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/Audio/rhyme/Freeware.htm
This dictionary is mainly intended for use by songwriters and poets, but you will find
that it is a useful tool in your study of phonetics and phonology as well. You need to first
enter a word to rhyme, then the number of phonemes and syllables you want matched.
You must use regular English spelling rather than IPA to input the sounds, but you need
only provide one possible spelling and the dictionary will match words with various
spellings but the same sound. For example, if you input ate you will get words spelled
with ait, like gait and bait in addition to words like rate. For this example,
choose 'Reverse - Rhyme from right to left', '2' phonemes, '1' syllable. This way you will
also get word matches with more than one syllable; if you choose 'Reverse - Matching
syllables', you will get only one-syllable word matches. Be sure to input a real existing
word rather than just a final rhyme; for example, you will find no matches for ait, but
there will be lots for gait
. This is a minor drawback since you have to know an existing
word to find the matches and cannot just input a bare rhyme, but with a little
resourcefulness it is largely overcomeable. To find matches for [ǤǺn] try inputting coin
.
You can type in little for [Ǻɾlʜ] rhymes.
"Rhyme" can also find words that match the beginning sounds of your chosen word,
much like you could do with a conventional dictionary. For example, if you input play
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