Jabberwocky sentence
A Jabberwocky sentence is a type of sentence of interest in neurolinguistics. Jabberwocky sentences take their name from the language of Lewis Carroll's well-known poem "Jabberwocky". In the poem, Carroll uses correct English grammar and syntax, but many of the words are made up and merely suggest meaning. A Jabberwocky sentence is therefore a sentence which uses correct grammar and syntax but contains nonsense words, rendering it semantically meaningless.
Interest in neurolinguistics
Jabberwocky sentences are of interest in the field of
Another study in by Yamada and Neville (2007) examined the differences between brain activity elicited with grammatical and "ungrammatical" English sentences (sentences that contain actual words but have a grammar error) and with grammatical and ungrammatical Jabberwocky sentences. It was found that in both English and Jabberwocky sentences, a negativity was elicited when a syntactic violation (grammar mistake) was made, but the activity was more anterior in the case of the English sentence. They found that differences in activity between grammatical and ungrammatical sentences were more focused toward the front and right hemispheres for English sentences, but was evenly distributed throughout all sites for Jabberwocky sentences. [3]
A study conducted by Bonhage, Mueller, Friederici, and Fiebach (2015) concluded that Jabberwocky sentences elicit a different neurological response than normal sentences. Specifically, Jabberwocky sentences elicited activity from structures in the left hemisphere of the brain, in contrast with normal sentences which mainly elicit activity in the right hemisphere of the brain. [4]
See also
References
- PMID 11275482.
- ^ Juan Silva-Pereyra, Barbara T. Conboy, Lindsay Klarman, Patricia K. Kuhl . Grammatical Processing without Semantics? An Event-related Brain Potential Study of Preschoolers using Jabberwocky Sentences" Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Volume 19, Number 6 (June 2007), pp. 1050-1065, http://ejournals.ebsco.com/direct.asp?ArticleID=46509FA4B2C116E917E7
- PMID 17173867.
- S2CID 35922812.