1.06 The Jabberwocky

As readers, we can't help but wonder “what is a tove, and what does it mean for a tove to gyre and gimble?” 

But even as we wonder that, notice that you’ve intuitively grasped the parts of speech of this nonsensical sentence. 

You already know that toves is a noun, that slithy is an adjective modifying that noun, and that gyre and gimble are verbs that explain what that noun is doing. Even though you don't know these words, and you certainly don't know what they mean as you read the poem, you are able to use your understanding of English to begin to make meaning from what is otherwise nonsense. 

This is because the grammatical syntax of sentences helps us to decode meaning. We do this all the time when we encounter unfamiliar words. As we're reading, we intuitively use context clues to help us construct our understanding. Your ability to do this at an intuitive level is why you can read a book littered with unfamiliar words, and not rely on looking each one up in the dictionary. Your understanding of the surrounding words, as well as the grammatical syntax, help you to figure out the meaning of unfamiliar words.  

Look again at this poem’s opening: we can spot a number of words that linguists call function words. “It was,” “and the,” “did,” “and,” and “in the” signal to us how to understand who is doing what, when, and where. 

Even in the case of a nonsense word as cryptic as “brillig,” the preceding “it was” function lets us know that this nonsense word has some reference to time within the sentence: it could be that brillig is a special holiday or a season or a time in the day, or it could be a descriptor of the quality of the time like maybe it was hot. But regardless, we know something about how this word is structuring the rest of the sentence. 

Similarly, we can immediately identify “toves” as our noun, because English sentences typically place the subject of the sentence toward the beginning, and because of the preceding “and the” function. In the case of “slithy,” the y-ending of the word, plus its relation to the “and the” function before it and the noun-sounding word following, suggests its role as an adjective.

Adapted from Demme Learning

As you read the poem in its entirety, try to decode the meaning of each word. Use your semantic analysis to help you, and don't get too caught up on the exact translation of every single word. If you're stuck, here's a great resource to help, but remember that the goal is to use grammatical structure and context clues to decipher the meaning. 

1.06 Assessment:

Complete the 1.06 workfile by translating the poem and answering the analysis questions.