Y and w, although you see those letters at the ends of words, really don't engage
themselves, except at the beginnings of words.
So play, which ends in y, isn't play[SOUND].
But[sound] yes. Yes does engage the y sound, that is to
say, puts the middle of your tongue very close to your soft palette,[SOUND],
leaving only a little room. The w,[SOUND] winner,[SOUND] winner,
winner, winner. The lip vowel gives you again an
attenuated sound at the very end of the vowel triangle shown here.
Note that the, the y is the extreme end of the tongue vowels, going from the
sound,[SOUND] and is therefore a semivowel.
And note, going up the lip vowel side,[SOUND], the w sound is the extreme
of the lip vowel leg of the vowel triangle.
So, those consonant sounds don't figure into family rhyme.
But they certainly, at least the l, the r will figure into what we're doing now,
which is called additive and subtractive rhymes.
Note also another huge category of words does not fit into the family rhyme mode.
Those are, of course, words that don't end in consonants.
The word free, the word go, the word play do not end in consonant sounds, they end
in vowel sounds. And so, since they end in vowel sounds,
and since family rhyme says, condition two, that the consonants after the vowel
belong to the same phonetic family, since there are no consonants after the vowel in
free, in play, in grow, family rhyme doesn't figure in there either.
So when we're dealing with those open vowels, that is vowels that end the, the
word, or when we're dealing with l and r, we have to work another way to start
creating opportunities for something less stable than perfect rhyme.
So, let's talk about additive rhyme. Additive rhyme, you have two words or two
syllables. One of which, the second of which, adds
something that the first doesn't contain. What if we wanted it to be much more
stable? What if our idea was much more stable.
Then we would try to add. As little sound as possible to the second
member of the pair. So again, using the long i, cry, what
would be the least possible sound that you could add?
Think about that for a minute. Take a look at the consonants.What would
be the least possible sound you can add? So, cry, bribe, cry, bribe, using the
voice close to b or cry, ride, using the voice close to d.
G is not going to work, just because of the nature of g, raising your tongue up
and changing the vowel sound. So, really you don't get that.
So that so that here, additively, adding the least possible sound gives us the most
stable possibility. Whereas adding a punch of sound creates a
less stable connection like cry, smile, cry, bride and, and so, that middle
position that you see in the scale of rhyme types, is pretty movable that it can
move more toward fully resolved or more toward less resolved depending on how much
sound you add. Remember when we were talking about line
lengths, when we were talking about the relationship between longer and shorter
lines and that when you start with a shorter line, and then go to a longer
line, that you are matching your shorter line along the way and then extending
beyond it and that creates stability. That creates a little more stability than
when you are moving the other way and doing, say for example, Mary had a little
lamb, fleece was white as snow. So that longer versus shorter moves you
forward and shorter versus longer keeps you a little more stable.
The same is true with additive rhymes, that because, because say bride adds a
sound, it is already matched cry, along the way before it, before it adds the d.
And so just as a shorter versus longer line, feels a little more stable.