The Space of Perfect Rhyme and Perfect Similarity

Perfect rhyme is the most well-known kind of perfect similarity, but there are many other forms. Let’s explore how frequent they really are!
June 22, 2017—Jordan Ackerman
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  • Perfect rhyme: (cat, sat) (sit, fit) (hello, Jell-O, fellow)
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  • Perfect assonance: (bat, tab, tack) (meet, seen, week) (go, known, hope)
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  • Perfect consonance: (black, bleak, bloke, Blake) (cut, cat, kit, Kate, kite)

    • Initialization

    Before we begin, let’s grab the subset of words from WordData for which there are phonetic transcriptions. We will need these for our sound similarity condition tests.
    In[]:=
    $wordsWithPhoneticForm=Select[WordData[], !MissingQ[WordData[#,"PhoneticForm"]]&];(*Thisleavesuswith29,795wordsfortheexploration*)
    Here we generate a list of all unique word pairs from our dictionary; this excludes identity comparisons:
    In[]:=
    allPairs=Join@@Monitor[Table[{$wordsWithPhoneticForm[[i]],$wordsWithPhoneticForm[[j]]},{i,1,10000-1},{j,i+1,10000}],{i,j}]
    In[]:=
    vowels="a","æ","ɛ","ʌ","ɔ","ə","e","o","ʊ","i","u","ɪ","ɝ","ɒ";​​consonants="ŋ","ɡ","ʃ","ʒ","b","d","ð","f","h","j","k","l","m","n","p","r","s","t","v","w","z","θ";

    Perfect Rhyme—User Input

    Perfect Rhyme—Exhaustive Dictionary Search

    Perfect Assonance—Exhaustive Dictionary Search

    Perfect Consonance—Exhaustive Dictionary Search

    What Does This Mean?

    Unanswered Questions

    FURTHER EXPLORATIONS
    Slant Rhyme (imperfect rhyme)
    Nonce Words
    Poetry/Rap/Battle Rap
    Phonological Similarity
    AUTHORSHIP INFORMATION
    Jordan Ackerman
    6/22/17