Rhyme or reason

[pseudomonas]

Have a poll so I can settle an argument about rhyming

Poll #6890 Rhyme or reason

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 31

View Respondents

Which of the following do you feel rhymes more closely (or least badly) with "thought it"?

View Answers

Fawcett
24 (77.4%)

Corbett
7 (22.6%)

You may wish to note that my speech is non-rhotic and disregard the rrrrness of the r in "Corbett"

Reasons for your choice are welcome in comments!

Comments

[bugshaw]

I have heard Corbett spoken out loud a lot more often that Fawcett. Does Fawcett sound like 'force it'?

[pseudomonas]

In my speech, yes.

[sunflowerinrain]

Ah, this clarifies the poll question a little. Fawcett isn't so much like 'force it' in mine, because there is a noticeable distinction between ett and it.

[pne]

Same here.

"Fawcett" has the same last syllable (as far as the vowel sound is concerned) as "abbot" for me, while "force it", "thought it", and "Corbett" have the same last syllable as "rabbit" for me.

I also distinguish "Rosa's" and "roses".

[chris]

My linguistics isn't up to much at all, but I'd tend to see the "ght" sound and the gap between the two words as requiring some sort of vocal stop, as provided by the "b" in the middle of Corbett and as not provided by the "awce" in the middle of Fawcett.

[pseudomonas]

That was what I thought too, the stoppiness of the p/t was more important than the dentalness of the s/t.

[simont]

Whereas I voted Fawcett for precisely the opposite reason; the soft c felt more like a t in my mouth than the b did.

It may have been significant to me that c/t are both unvoiced as well as both vaguely dental-ish. An effect of the unvoicedness is that you stop saying the previous vowel before articulating the consonant, and that makes the vowel sound feel more similar between the c/t words and less like the b word in which the vocal cords just keep rolling throughout.

[merrythebard]

I hear the "or" of "Corbett" and the "aw" of Fawcett as very slightly different from each other, and the latter as being closer to "thought".

[merrythebard]

Also, and more importantly, while obviously the "c" of "Fawcett" is soft and the "t" of "thought it" is hard, they both have the tongue in the same place (palate), whereas the "b" is a bilabial plosive (and quite hard, as "b"s go). And bilabial plosives generally need to only go with other bilabial plosives. They're very final and... well. Bilabial. :-)

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

I think I am swayed by the unvoicedness and position of articulation of the /s/ in Fawcett.

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

(And I would add pedantically that that position of articulation, for /s/ and /t/ in British English, is alveolar rather than dental!)

[sea_bright]

Having sat here for a few minutes muttering 'Fawcett thought it; Corbett thought it' and trying to work out why I instinctively plumped for the former, I've reached the conclusion that it's the final vowel that does it for me. The second syllable of 'Fawcett' sounds not similar to 'sit' to me, whereas with 'Corbett' it's more like 'but', or possibly 'bət'.

[gerald_duck]

I agree with some of the other reasons people have given for preferring Fawcett. But I think another factor is the rhyme being reinforced by the near-alliteration of "f" and "th".

[ptc24]

Yeah, when I came up with "Fawcett" I was coming up with a response to "who'd a thunk it, David Blunkett". As such, "Fawcett" is better in the slot in a "who'd a thought it, $first_name $surname", even if the rhyme itself is not better.