Neil Hennessey’s Jabberwocky Engine serves as a rather fascinating manner of illustrating the unspoken ability to decide what words are grammatical within a language and which words fall short. Native English speakers can instantly decide if a word is grammatical but cannot, for the most part, explain exactly why certain letter combinations work or conflict. Linguistically speaking, words with consonant combinations that are too difficult for English pronunciation simply don’t hold significance as “real” words and, in the case of Jabber, explode. The floating green and blue words, by representing plausible combinations, convey the subconscious ability to pick out what “sounds” right despite having never seen them before. In rationalizing what works and what doesn’t, Jabber effectively evokes the unnoticed skill of brining up a veritable consonant chart that outlines why it is so difficult, for native English speakers, to pronounce sounds that would require a coronal nasal sound followed by a lateral coronal sound (for example the “n” and “l” in “nlad”). In this case, the speaker identifies that “n” and “l” are too similar in where they are articulated and that English requires a buffer, usually created by inserting a vowel.
Though Jabber appears to be a fun and creative toy, it truly exemplifies how a native English speaker’s brain works. Even when creating nonsense words, certain rules must be followed. Just as in the original Jabberwocky, not all parts of speech could be replaced. For inferred meaning of the nonsense words to take place, articles and prepositions had to remain constant. This idea of a set framework applies to individual words as well. So long as one remains within certain perameters, one can conjure up any word wished; however, creativity halts when the words are no longer nonsense and instead become utterly incomprehensible. It is due to our imprinted and hidden knowledge of our native language that we can, with absolute resolution, say whether a word can exist, and Neil Hennessey’s engine shows exactly that.