Tag: jabberwocky

Jabberywocky and Its Linguistic Implications

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.

Jabberwocky as art

On the surface Jabberwocky seems quite meaningless; it is literally a machine that generates jibberish. As someone who does not have the technical saavy to make the software needed to produce such a machine, I can appreciate the technical know-how involved. To create this generator involves quite a lot of rules and possibilitiesin the encryption, but the outcome is meaningless. The words in the output are nonsensical and useless, and although a few real words are mixed in, a reasonable person would find this generator random and stupid. Looking deeper at the representational meaning, I see how this could be seen as art. In this new, “textual media” forum, I see the Jabberwocky as a piece that could be seen in an art exhibit at a museum. Having read the biography of the creator, I realize that he sees himself as an artist in this new realm and his productions as pieces of art. Just as many pieces of “traditional” art can leave many confused, in the abstract the meanings of the piece can be endless.
This brings me to the evocative meaning; I don’t see any larger politcal statement being made, but simply a playfulness formatted in a sophisticated way. I imagine young children, who are far more computer literate than I was at their age, use the output from Jabberwocky as a code for a secret language. Perhaps Jabberwocky is a statement on the state of society as a whole, and its future direction. If kids resort to a computer generated machine to come up with a secret language, what does that say about their level of imagination? Sure they are well versed enough in computers to find and use the Jabberwocky, but it certainly takes the fun out of sitting around with your siblings and friends, and acting silly and goofy while making up words.

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The jabberwocky engine presents the most compelling relationship between representational and evocative meaning, due in part to the seemingly limitless combinations of nonsensical words it can string together, and to the inherent incoherence of the English language’s own phonetic rules trying to make sense of these random collisions.

Ostensibly, JABBER entertains with the nonsense it vomits out, demonstrating English phonetics in an energetic and highly repeatable way.  But certain implications about language start to surface as the random words start to just barely resemble something you might imagine saying, after violently stubbing your toe or mumbled at the edge of sleep.  We encounter the idea that at one time a bunch of glorified apes had to come together to think of a word for “dog” or “elephant” or “banana,” and that however nonsensical the words produced by JABBER look, they’re pretty fun to say.