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

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

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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

[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.