Beatboxing Phonology

Abstract

Beatboxing is a type of non-linguistic vocal percussion that can be performed as an accompaniment to linguistic music or as a standalone performance. This dissertation is the first major effort to begin to probe beatboxing cognition—specifically beatboxing phonology—and to develop a theoretical framework relating representations in speech and beatboxing that can account for phonological phenomena that speech and beatboxing share. In doing so, it contributes to the longstanding debate about the domain-specificity of language: because hallmarks of linguistic phonology like contrastive units (Chapter 3), alternations (Chapter 5), and harmony (Chapter 6) also exist in beatboxing, beatboxing phonology provides evidence that beatboxing and speech share not only the vocal tract but also organizational foundations, including a certain type of mental representations and coordination of those representations.

Beatboxing has phonological behavior based in its own phonological units and organization. One could choose to model beatboxing with adaptations of either features or gestures as its fundamental units. But as Chapter 4: Theory discusses, a gestural approach captures both domain-specific aspects of phonology (learned targets and parameter settings for a given constriction) and domain-general aspects (the ability of gestural representations to contrast, to participate in class-based behavior, and to undergo qualitative changes). Gestures have domain-specific meaning within their own system (speech or beatboxing) while sharing a domain-general conformation with other behaviors. Gestures can do this by explicitly connecting the tasks specific to speech or to beatboxing with the sound-making potential of the vocal substrate they share; this in turn creates a direct link between speech gestures and beatboxing gestures. This link is formalized at the graph level of the dynamical systems by which gestures are defined.

The direct formal link between beatboxing and speech units makes predictions about what types of phonological phenomena beatboxing and speech units are able to exhibit—including phonological alternations and harmony mentioned above. It also predicts that the phonological units of the two domains will be able to co-occur, with beatboxing and speech sounds interwoven together by a single individual. This type of behavior is known as “beatrhyming” (Chapter 7: Beatrhyming).

These advantages of the gestural approach for describing speech, beatboxing, and beatrhyming underscore a broader point: that regardless of whether phonology is modular or not, the phonological system is not encapsulated away from other cognitive domains, nor impermeable to connections with other domains. On the contrary, phonological units are intrinsically related to beatboxing units—and, presumably, to other units in similar systems—via the conformation of their mental representations. As beatrhyming helps to illustrate, the properties that the phonological system shares with other domains are also the foundation of the phonological system’s ability to flexibly integrate with other (e.g., musical) domains.