Rhyming and Memory

[Raphael]

Does anyone else have the impression that rhyming texts are a lot easier to memorize, and even a lot more difficult to forget, than other texts? Why is that so? It might be hard-wired into the way our brains work - but it's kind of difficult to imagine how that would work, given that what does or doesn't "rhyme" seems to be very much dependent on culture.

I do kind of resent the way how, out of all the things from my childhood, some silly advertising ditties re-emerge in my brain a lot more easily and frequently than all kinds of stuff that's arguably a lot more important.

[bradrn]

Does anyone else have the impression that rhyming texts are a lot easier to memorize, and even a lot more difficult to forget, than other texts? Why is that so? It might be hard-wired into the way our brains work - but it's kind of difficult to imagine how that would work, given that what does or doesn't "rhyme" seems to be very much dependent on culture.

I do kind of resent the way how, out of all the things from my childhood, some silly advertising ditties re-emerge in my brain a lot more easily and frequently than all kinds of stuff that's arguably a lot more important.

I get the impression this is pretty common. I think it’s just because there’s less to memorise with rhyming texts — you’re regularly repeating whole syllable rimes. Also, perhaps it gives the brain a natural place to ‘break up’ the memory into chunks. I can’t be entirely sure why this is, though.

[Ares Land]

Oh, yes, definitely. That's sort of the explanation behind epic poetry. The Iliad doesn't rhyme, but the meter did make it easier to memorize; Beowulf uses meter and alliteration to the same effect.

Okay, I did just say that analogy between the brain and computers have their limits; but I think the explanation is perhaps akin to the way data compression works: having some sorts of pattern means that there's less information to memorize overall.

(I remember TV advertising from when I was a kid very well... But the damn things were endlessly repeated too.)

[zompist]

Oh, yes, definitely. That's sort of the explanation behind epic poetry. The Iliad doesn't rhyme, but the meter did make it easier to memorize; Beowulf uses meter and alliteration to the same effect.

In India, even scholarly works like the Laws of Manu were written in verse. I'm pretty sure Panini's grammar was, too.

Okay, I did just say that analogy between the brain and computers have their limits; but I think the explanation is perhaps akin to the way data compression works: having some sorts of pattern means that there's less information to memorize overall.

We really know very little about how the brain processes language. Your idea seems reasonable enough; if you're trying to remember something, the meter may constrain the possibilities. On the other hand, poets are notorious for using unusual phrasing or words, which expand the possibilities.

Alternatively, maybe poetry is simply more vivid— whatever exactly vividness is. Proverbs are usually easy to remember, even though they often don't rhyme.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I might hazard that some form of parallelism might make things easier to remember. Rhyme (or even terminal assonance) can do this, I would imagine because it causes you to anticipate one word from a small subset (at least with English; some languages rhyme far, far more easily). "Vividness" is probably a contributing factor, too.

[alice]

In India, even scholarly works like the Laws of Manu were written in verse. I'm pretty sure Panini's grammar was, too.

Now that's a way to make your conlang grammars more exciting.

[bradrn]

In India, even scholarly works like the Laws of Manu were written in verse. I'm pretty sure Panini's grammar was, too.

Now that's a way to make your conlang grammars more exciting.

Of consonants, the nasals— listed first—
occur in three articulated places.
Bilabial, velar and alveolar too,
are present as expected (Table 1).
The stops occur prenasalised as well,
in correspondence with the nasals three.
Unusually, the velar voiced stop */ɡ/,
is present only in prenasalised form.
The stops are present in three series more:
the voiceless, aspirated, and the voiced.
The first is tenuis, while the latter two,
are realised with full pronunciation.
Now turning to the affr’cates, these four sounds
have similarities towards the stops
but they are organised in series twain.
Voiced affricates are absent from the chart,
with voiceless phonemes all that do remain.

Now, fricatives: these interesting sounds:
here five of them exist, though some are rare.
The character of each I will explain:…

(See also Bunnett and Kearly (1971).)

[mocha]

Even if you forget one of the words that rhyme in a rhymed text, there are only a few possibilities, usually, and the correct choice is obvious.

Early to bed and early to rise
makes a man healthy, wealthy, and ____.

Hmm, wonder what that could be...

[bradrn]

Even if you forget one of the words that rhyme in a rhymed text, there are only a few possibilities, usually, and the correct choice is obvious.

Early to bed and early to rise
makes a man healthy, wealthy, and ____.

Hmm, wonder what that could be...

‘Pies’, obviously.

[mocha]

Even if you forget one of the words that rhyme in a rhymed text, there are only a few possibilities, usually, and the correct choice is obvious.

Early to bed and early to rise
makes a man healthy, wealthy, and ____.

Hmm, wonder what that could be...

‘Pies’, obviously.

And here I was, always thinking it was 'thighs'. Silly me.

[zompist]

there are only a few possibilities, usually, and the correct choice is obvious.

Early to bed and early to rise
makes a man healthy, wealthy, and ____.

Sure. But how about

And a good south wind sprung up behind;
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariner’s ___!

(a different poem)
His gifted ken can see
Phantoms of __

The first one was new to me (though there's a more familiar word much like it that doesn't rhyme with "follow"). The second doesn't narrow things down much at all.

I'd also note that correctly guessing the last word in the first stanza quoted only helps you memorize one content word in 14. (That's assuming you can fill in the grammatical words.)

Or to quote some more modern poets... if you didn't know this song, could you guess both words?

Priests and cannibals, prehistoric ___
Big black nemesis, ___

Part of the point of that verse-- and this is pretty common-- is to make the rhyme unexpected.

[mocha]

And a good south wind sprung up behind;
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariner’s ___!

(a different poem)
His gifted ken can see
Phantoms of __

For the first - having never seen it, I put a 90% probability on hollow and 10% on swallow. No idea what else it could be.

For the second, yeah, that's definitely not enough. But is there more to the poem? I don't read much poetry but it seems sort of surprising to me to see something so short.

I would say though, generally speaking, having only one of the rhymes missing, it is usually possible to correctly guess the other.

[zompist]

For the first - having never seen it, I put a 90% probability on hollow and 10% on swallow. No idea what else it could be.

It's hollo, a variant of holler.

For the second, yeah, that's definitely not enough. But is there more to the poem? I don't read much poetry but it seems sort of surprising to me to see something so short.

It's just one verse in a longer poem.

I would say though, generally speaking, having only one of the rhymes missing, it is usually possible to correctly guess the other.

Yeah, probably. It certainly makes the text easier to memorize. With statements like this, though, I always want to quantize: how much easier is it? When it just gives one word, it doesn't seem to be to completely answer Raphael's question.

[Kuchigakatai]

Of consonants, the nasals— listed first—
occur in three articulated places.
Bilabial, velar and alveolar too,
are present as expected (Table 1).
The stops occur prenasalised as well,
in correspondence with the nasals three.
Unusually, the velar voiced stop */ɡ/,
is present only in prenasalised form.
The stops are present in three series more:
the voiceless, aspirated, and the voiced.
The first is tenuis, while the latter two,
are realised with full pronunciation.
Now turning to the affr’cates, these four sounds
have similarities towards the stops
but they are organised in series twain.
Voiced affricates are absent from the chart,
with voiceless phonemes all that do remain.

Now, fricatives: these interesting sounds:
here five of them exist, though some are rare.
The character of each I will explain:…

(See also Bunnett and Kearly (1971).)

Well, I really enjoyed that.

Would you say a good description of the prosody you used is simply "four stresses per line" (most of the time), with sporadic rhyming in contiguous lines (three ~ /g/, twain ~ remain, maybe also "form ~ more")? There's certainly something to it.

[hwhatting]

Well, I really enjoyed that.

I did, too. But now, Brad, you absolutely must finish this.

[bradrn]

Would you say a good description of the prosody you used is simply "four stresses per line" (most of the time), with sporadic rhyming in contiguous lines (three ~ /g/, twain ~ remain, maybe also "form ~ more")? There's certainly something to it.

Oh, I was just going for iambic pentameter:

Of cónsonánts, the násals— lísted fírst—
occúr in thrée artículáted pláces.
Bilábial, vélar, ánd alvéolar tóo,
are présent ás expécted (Táble óne).

The rhyming is unintentional but nice.

Well, I really enjoyed that.

I did, too. But now, Brad, you absolutely must finish this.

First I’ll finish the post, then I’ll translate it into rhyme, if I get time.

[vegfarandi]

I've come to think of poetry as a technology. Before writing, the use of poetic devices allowed "writing" i.e. the composition of text, memorization of it and therefore the ability to pass it along. Before there was writing, poetry was the most efficient way of passing complex information from one person to the next. This is pretty clear in that all pre-written literature that survives is in some kind of meter.

As to why, cognitively, this works, I'm sure there's other people who are more qualified to explain that but I recently read The Texture of the Lexicon by Ray Jackendoff and Jenny Audring. It presents a very compelling case for the beginnings of a theory of how the lexicon (and grammar, which they argue is essentially a subset of the lexicon as opposed to a sibling as previously argued by many) is structured in the brain. The basic idea of the theory, which they call Relational Morphology (which is based on a previous theory, Parallel Architecture, also devised by Jackendoff, is that each lexical item is stored as a three-parter (at least – they only posit the three parts but I think there could be a few more): semantics, syntax and phonology. So for a word like "pig" you have:

Semantics: PIG₁
Syntax: N₁
Phonology: /pɪg/₁

The indexes ₁ – which they call interface links – represent parity between the three elements: the semantic element PIG is directly associated with syntax N (itself stored in a similar structure, read the book for more) and the phonology /pɪg/.

(OK I feel like I'm biting off more than I can chew here as I have to explain so much of the theory before I get to how it might be applicable to the cognitive processing of poetry.) Anyway, trying to make a really long story short, you can similarly think of a phrase such as "the pig" as a structure:

[PIG₁; DEF₂]₃
[_NP Det₂ N₁]₃
/ðə₂ pɪg₁/₃

Note that the elements "the" and "pig" are each separately indexed and the unit of the two forms a unique unit 3. Contrast that with a word such as "piggish" which is derived from pig but has a unique meaning thus:

[LIKE (PIG₁); SLOPPY, GREEDY]₄
[_A N₁affix₅]₄
/pɪg₁ ɪʃ₅/₄

Here, -ish shares the coindex 5, but it is not attached to the semantic element LIKE. However, the affix when combined with PIG generates a new meaning coindexed with 4.

The RM model demonstrates how you can both get simple concatenation of elements (the + pig) and a complex one (pig + ish). The brain is storing the elements pig, the and -ish; it is also per their theory storing the compounded elements "the pig" and "piggish" but in a way that preserves the connection (for most speakers) to the simplex units they're composed of. The system also allows for the storing of just one or two of the three components: you can leave out syntax, semantics or phonology. So rhymed iambic pentameter can be stored as a phonological schema. The stored schema allows the brain to link closer together the various elements joined together in the verse, creating associations through new indexes that didn't necessarily exist before OR putting indexes that previously did exist (such as a common elements like -ing or -ish etc. or stress pattern / ¯ ˘ /) to work, so to say.

Anyway, I'm quite sure I'm not explaining this as well as Ray and Jenny, so I really suggest reading this book. It's really changed the way I think about a lot in linguistics and from the buzz among linguists I'm keep seeing on social media, I think this is one of those revolutionary theories that comes along once in a blue moon and I'm curious to see how and if it helps advance the cognitive arm of linguistics and perhaps starts to bring some theories a little bit closer to some kind of objective, measurable truth.

[zompist]

I recently read The Texture of the Lexicon by Ray Jackendoff and Jenny Audring. It presents a very compelling case for the beginnings of a theory of how the lexicon (and grammar, which they argue is essentially a subset of the lexicon as opposed to a sibling as previously argued by many) is structured in the brain.

I'll have to check this out. Nice to see that Jackendoff is still busy at 77. Anyone who's read the SCK may recall Simpler Syntax, the model he devised with Peter Cullicover, which is an earlier version of the one from this book. He's one of the few linguists who try to bridge the gap between Chomskyan and cognitive linguistics.

[vegfarandi]

I recently read The Texture of the Lexicon by Ray Jackendoff and Jenny Audring. It presents a very compelling case for the beginnings of a theory of how the lexicon (and grammar, which they argue is essentially a subset of the lexicon as opposed to a sibling as previously argued by many) is structured in the brain.

I'll have to check this out. Nice to see that Jackendoff is still busy at 77. Anyone who's read the SCK may recall Simpler Syntax, the model he devised with Peter Cullicover, which is an earlier version of the one from this book. He's one of the few linguists who try to bridge the gap between Chomskyan and cognitive linguistics.

Definitely! I'm inspired to write an article outlining how the RM framework would work in Icelandic as a test case. But first I have to finish my Dune translation.