through the looking glass lightly: Jabberwocky

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JABBERWOCKY.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
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D: this poem gets more mileage in linguistic textbooks and studies!

This is an example of a nonsense poem.

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice finds a poem in book and tries to read it, but the poem is written backwards, so she holds it up to a mirror to read it. She still does not understand it, even though she claims it did seem give her ideas.

That poem is now famously known as “Jabberwocky.” It is often hailed the most important nonsense poem in the English language. But if a reader looks closely, there is a method to the speaker’s madness in this poem. As Humpty Dumpty explains the poem to Alice, he demonstrates that the poet actually created an important, intelligent poem that is not entirely nonsense.

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D: take the first passage.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

D: English has grammatical indicators. They are a closed class of function words. The list hardly ever changes historically. I think the last addition was from old English, "will".
These function words, infixes and word order all effectively create distinct meaning in English.

Infix cues in English include:
1) plural - s
2) possessive - 's
3) 3rd person singular - s
4) past tense - typically -ed
5) present participle -ing
6) past participle - (have plus) -ed typically
7) comparative and superlative -er and -est.

Word order is SVO - subject verb object. Noun verb noun.
With some details, like Subject: Article, adjective, noun...
Subject and object pronouns provide additional detail.
Subject: I. BUT object: me.

And so armed, we can engage in a constituent analysis.

Traditional school grammar works up to a point.
Noun. Right. Verb. Right.
... Adverb? Nope.
It take -ly you say? You drive quickly. BUT. You drive... FAST. Not fastly.
Prepositions, conjunctions and interjections do not have clear morphological indicators.
Hit - is it a noun or verb?
Beautiful - if it is an adjective, why can it not take comparative -er ending?
If poor is an adjective, then how can the poor be at a disadvantage?

So once again, we visit Alice in Wonderland.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

'Twas -, and the -y -s
Did - and - in the -:
All -y were the -s,
And the - -s out-.

D: If we used existing standard vocabulary, the first line could easily be as follows.

'Twas pithy, and the funny puns

But even without these known words, the nonsense verse somehow FEELS sensible as our grammar brain organ parses it according to cues.

D: I recall a few years ago how the SAT test in the USA had an essay. A computer was marking it automatically.
Someone wrote nonsense verse with impeccable grammar.
LOL! The computer gave them high marks.
Completely lacking meaningful content!

Our brains are good at sorting out meaning from very little helpful data:

"Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteers be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."

D: there was no study. But the passage makes its point.