Why did Lewis Carroll write the poem “Jabberwocky?”?
Rev. Dodgeson was a logician, like myself. The poem is designed to raise and exemplify the question of whether there can be grammar without semantic content. A broader question is whether there can be logic without semantic content as in All X is Y, All Y is Z. Therefore All X is Z. Is this logic, or just symbol shuffling (algebra)? If it is logic them maybe “all mimesie were the borogoves and the mome wraths outgrabe’. is a gramatical sentence. The principal advocate for this in modern times would be Dr. Noam Chomsky, (who I personally regard as a big fat idiot). The teacher alive today who would say that the gabble about mome wraths is not a grammatical sentence and that the shuffling about of X’s and Y’s is not logic is Edward Sparrow, SJ (my own teacher) who learned what he knew about logic from Henry Veatch, SJ and Dr. Parker. Anyhow, Dodgeson was way ahead of his time. He foresaw the perils of content-free grammar and content-free logic. His playful writings to amuse his youthful
