Musical logic and syntax: The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid
Takeall the spacesout and put themin diffe rentplaces and youcanalso rea dit.
This has been circulating around the Internet for over 10 years, and is somewhat of a meme. It demonstrates that strings of words are independent of meaning, and can be rearranged non-destructively:
fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too. Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.
i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghi t pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it.
Displacement has been used in music for centuries as a way of playing with underlying logic and syntax. Composers use displacement and melodic sub-figuration to create variation based on motifs and other thematic ideas. The opening motif of Beethoven's 5th is displaced by an eighth rest, and occurs on an upbeat. Apparently it was intended to be a musical representation of a knock on a door ("Thus fate knocks at the door") For all intents and purposes, to the listener it sounds like a downbeat.
There is also a priming affect of reading strings of words horizontally, each separated by a space. It is something our eye and brain are used to doing. Text in other configurations is much more difficult to decipher.
Take for instance the text paintings of Christopher Wool, where words are arranged vertically, with no regular spaces between them:
Where meaning gets scrambled is when accents are shifted. Language relies on rhythm and prosody (melody) for comprehension. If you displace the points of emphasis in a sentence, it changes its meaning. Unlike the Beethoven motif, if you shift the "note" duration in a sentence it begins to sound like a foreign language:
Normal rhythm:
If you read the sentence with stresses on other words and syllables, it becomes almost unintelligible. Read the sentence and put the stresses on the second syllable of the word “even” and on the second syllable of the word “rhythm.”
Spoken language is essentially musical in nature. Otherwise reading horizontal strings of words can work even if displaced or scrambled, but it doesn't work with speech and/or sound. Why is that?
***
Post-script:
Even without spaces, text is readable. Spaces make it easier, or perhaps more musical in that there are "bar lines", or "rests"
MeaningisinthespacesbetweenthewordsButyoudon'tnecessarilyneedthembecausecapitalsandpunctuationcanservethatpurpose.Spacesincreasereadabilitybutitcanworkwithoutthem.
This has been circulating around the Internet for over 10 years, and is somewhat of a meme. It demonstrates that strings of words are independent of meaning, and can be rearranged non-destructively:
fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too. Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.
i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghi t pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it.
Displacement has been used in music for centuries as a way of playing with underlying logic and syntax. Composers use displacement and melodic sub-figuration to create variation based on motifs and other thematic ideas. The opening motif of Beethoven's 5th is displaced by an eighth rest, and occurs on an upbeat. Apparently it was intended to be a musical representation of a knock on a door ("Thus fate knocks at the door") For all intents and purposes, to the listener it sounds like a downbeat.
There is also a priming affect of reading strings of words horizontally, each separated by a space. It is something our eye and brain are used to doing. Text in other configurations is much more difficult to decipher.
Take for instance the text paintings of Christopher Wool, where words are arranged vertically, with no regular spaces between them:
Where meaning gets scrambled is when accents are shifted. Language relies on rhythm and prosody (melody) for comprehension. If you displace the points of emphasis in a sentence, it changes its meaning. Unlike the Beethoven motif, if you shift the "note" duration in a sentence it begins to sound like a foreign language:
Normal rhythm:
If you read the sentence with stresses on other words and syllables, it becomes almost unintelligible. Read the sentence and put the stresses on the second syllable of the word “even” and on the second syllable of the word “rhythm.”
Spoken language is essentially musical in nature. Otherwise reading horizontal strings of words can work even if displaced or scrambled, but it doesn't work with speech and/or sound. Why is that?
***
Post-script:
Even without spaces, text is readable. Spaces make it easier, or perhaps more musical in that there are "bar lines", or "rests"
MeaningisinthespacesbetweenthewordsButyoudon'tnecessarilyneedthembecausecapitalsandpunctuationcanservethatpurpose.Spacesincreasereadabilitybutitcanworkwithoutthem.
