Tori Tran, “The Effect of Phonological and Morphological Processes on Perception of Rhyme”
Mentor: Anne Pycha, Linguistics

Words whose endings sound similar are typically thought of as words that “rhyme.” That is, they have the same sequence of sounds in their endings. But there is a lot more to a word than just a sequence of sounds. Sometimes the sounds in a word are a result of phonological alternation where the abstract underlying sound is realized as a different one. What impact does the difference between an abstract and surface realization have on how “good” a rhyme is? Additionally, “endings” of words are not always within the same morpheme, instead they can span morpheme boundaries. What impact does a rhyme being contained within or spanning morpheme boundaries have on participants’ perception of it? This study investigated whether such phonological and morphological processes affect the perception of rhyme. L1 English Participants (N = 48) were shown pairs of words, each pair met one of four conditions: simple words that consist of only a single morpheme with no alternation (such as “mill-till”), complex words consisting of two or more morphemes with no alternation (“tiled-piled”), simple words with alternation (“fist-gist”), or complex words with alternation (“kissed-hissed”). Participants heard each pair one at a time, with each word in the pair produced by a different synthesized voice to ensure uniformity across conditions. They were then asked to rate the “goodness” of the rhyme in the pair on a sliding scale from 0-100, with encouragement to use the scale to its fullest extent. Results showed uniformity among conditions, implying that phonological and morphological structure of English words did not affect perception of rhyme.