The ear rhymes, the exam spells

Claim (verbatim)

The ear rhymes, the exam spells. Joins the two poetic registers of Song China to two enforcement institutions: regulated shi verse was examination technology, rhymed against the frozen categories of the official rhyme books long after speech had moved on, while ci lyrics were written to living melodies for singers whose audiences heard rhyme with their ears, not their rhyme dictionaries. One and the same poet should therefore rhyme like a phonologist's informant in ci and like a bureaucrat in shi — sound change leaking into the sung genre centuries before the examined genre admits it.

Prediction clause (verbatim)

For Song poets with substantial corpora in both genres, machine-check rhymes against Guangyun categories. Primary clause: in at least 80 percent of poets with 50 or more poems per genre, the rate of cross-category rhyming (Guangyun-illegal but phonologically motivated) is higher in their ci than in their regulated shi. Secondary: the pooled ci rate is at least five times the pooled shi rate. The verdict follows the within-poet 80 percent clause.

Kill-dataset (verbatim)

Kill: the Quan Song ci and Quan Song shi electronic corpora with Guangyun rhyme-category tables, as jointly implemented in the Sou-yun poetry database (sou-yun.cn).

Novelty / leakage triage

provisional — model-triaged, shepherd review pending

A provisional first pass authored by the model (Opus), not yet confirmed by the shepherd. It carries the same dated-search requirements as an authoritative verdict but is excluded from every headline figure and cannot underwrite a prediction until a shepherd confirms it. Provisional reading: Leaked (already exists in the literature).

The connection is a commonplace of Chinese historical phonology. Regulated shi rhymed against the frozen official categories (the Qieyun/Guangyun system, later Pingshui rhymes) retained for the examinations long after speech had changed, whereas ci was sung to living melodies and rhymes more loosely and colloquially -- so much so that Song ci rhyming is a primary source for reconstructing actual Song-period and dialectal phonology (Lu Guoyao's studies of Song ci-poets' rhyme categories are the classic instance, and the ci rhyme categories were later separately codified as the broader Cilin Zhengyun). That the sung genre admits sound change centuries before the examined genre is precisely why phonologists mine ci rhymes; the within-poet ci-vs-shi contrast is an established phenomenon.

• Lu Guoyao (魯國堯), studies of Song-period ci-poets' rhyming for phonological/dialect reconstruction (e.g. on the rhyme categories of Song ci) — Ci rhymes used to reconstruct living Song phonology precisely because they are looser than frozen shi rhyme books
• 'Ci (poetry)' and 'Guangyun' -- ci uses more flexible, colloquial rhyme vs the frozen Qieyun/Guangyun/Pingshui categories of regulated shi — The register/rhyme-standard contrast as background commonplace

Predictions

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