Beatrhyming probes the nature of the interface between phonology and beatboxing

Abstract

Beatboxing—a form of vocal music made with percussive sounds—has been shown to have its own set of sounds and grammatical properties. The development of beatrhyming—an art form in which beatboxing and speech are performed simultaneously by a single individual—presents the first opportunity to explore what happens when speech competes with a similar vocal task. In beatrhyming, beatboxing sounds often replace word onset consonants; for example, the word “float” /flot/ in beatrhyming can be pronounced as [pf’lot], with a PF Snare replacing the initial /f/ . In principle, the speech sound could be replaced by any beatboxing sound; however, English beatrhyming data from YouTube show that in many cases, the beatboxing sound shares articulatory properties (such as place of articulation) with the speech sound which it replaces. Beatrhyming is one of the only behaviors that forces an interaction between speech and another complex grammatical system of sounds; this makes beatrhyming a unique venue for exploring the relationship between speech phonology and other related aspects of human cognition.