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When you write the exact words of Shakespeare in one line, you immediately know that it was not intended to be written like that. On the other hand, take almost any one of the poems that are published in, let's say, the New Yorker (but also elsewhere), write it out in a continuous paragraph, and you will never know it was meant as poetry. My point: lots of poems seem to be just essays with the sentences broken at odd places......whatever would Shakespeare have thought of it?

Fascinating experiment even if one suspects that in years to come it will be viewed as splendidly wrongheaded.

The idea of "the brain working at a higher level of evolution" when processing Shakespeare's use of a noun as a verb is stretching things a bit though, surely? Homo sapiens has long been "wired" for semantic innovation.

Your research suggests that writing which avoids clichés and stretches the mind makes the reader use more brain (or rather, makes their brain work along new pathways) than its predictable, cliché-ridden opposite. QED.

Like the author, I'm an English teacher--indeed, my World Lit class is starting The Tempest tonight. I have Asperger's syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder. Asperger's is not always easily recognized, because those of us with it are generally higher-functioning than our bretheren with other disorders (a roundabout way of saying we are unlike a certain landmark in Mr. Dustin Hoffman's career, and I don't mean his Shylock). One way we function differently is that, while most autistic folk have limited language development--often never even talking--our language development tends to be unusually, extremely advanced. (I could read at 18 months, and couldn't walk yet.) What I'm driving at is this: the same test, perhaps, should be given to persons with Asperger's. Our brains definitely handle language in unique ways; while I make no guess as to what exactly would register when functional shift crosses such brains, I am sure it would be noteworthy.

This piece was interesting especially for what it revealed about the way Shakespeare transforms from words from their ordinary part - of speech to new usage as different part of speech.
However I would not confine the general conclusion to Shakespeare alone. Surely any linguistically innovative poet of the for instance Dickinson or Hopkins kind causes our mind to make new connections and come alive in new ways.

"I do not think this reductive", says Prof. Davis. How can changing words to formulas not be reductive?
He includes what I take to be an answer: the brain can distinguish semantics from syntax. It is merely syntax, and not semantics, that is reducible to formulas. The rules and regulations of grammar do not care what they mean any more than a passenger train cares who are its riders. And so, grammar is given to abstract representation.
Words do care what they mean. Words have roles to play. Semantically, meaning outranks the words that convey meaning. That is, meaning affects word-choice more than words can create meanings.
Shakespeare shocks us by using meaning to pull rank on the rules of syntax. The Elizabethan world-view was hierarchical after all, and Shakespeare was ever concerned with the relation of social rank and meaning - in every play. In Shakespeare's world, the will of those of high rank can bend the law to suit their ends.
Shakespeare shocks us out of prosaic complacency by using the meaning of a word untimely to rip it from its grammatical place. He forces us to put the role of meaning above the regulations of grammar. So, many of us spend our lives looking for meaning in Hamlet, etc.
The result translates into what social conservatives everywhere proclaim, that meaning and rank rise above the law of "man". This social dictum applies most primitively to prophets proclaiming Creationism and the end of Times - the meaning of the universe outranking the laws of physics. It applies more subtly to action heros rising above the law to preserve democracy and motherhood. It also applies to the myth of divinely inspired, entrepreneurial innovation pulling rank on governmental regulations.
Shakespeare understands what he writes about in real world terms more than the TV writers of "24" When Kings like Richard II and Lear confuse their rank with omnipotence, there is hell to pay.
In the mind, of course semantics and syntax play well together to create every act of human language. Both are necessary to human language. Apes for example, have words but no apparent capacity for grammar.

I'm a playwright and theatre professor currently repairing my own educational gap by loading in heaps of traditional rhetoric. I'd argue it's the single most useful tool for creative writing instruction, too.
One of the best resources I've found is free: BYU's Silva Rhetoricae webpage at http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm. Read and enjoy; enjoy, and read!

"[Shakespeare] forces us to put the role of meaning above the regulations of grammar."

It seems a bit more complicated than that: when Shakespeare verbs a noun, one could just as easily say that he’s making meaning serve a new grammatical function: so when, say, Iachimo says, “He furnaces thick sighs from him,” we read “furnaces” as a verb precisely because of grammar, the place/function it serves (telling verb) in the sentence in which it appears.

The expectation that S. plays with here is grammatical; we’re ready for a verb, but we encounter a nounlike word in its place; and this is when, according to this excellent article above, the synapses sparkle, attempting to reconcile this word with its unexpected grammatical function. It’s clearly a play of meaning and form, and, actually, as most contemporary linguistic models indicate, that tidy dichotomy and others like it (speaking of hierarchy)—such as meaning/grammar, form/content, semantics/syntax etc.--are simply after-the-fact categories that miss/oversimplify the dynamic and complex give-and-take of real language, its living shapesense.

Thank you Adrianne and Ty. I'm new to the formal study of rhetoric, so how return the favor...somewhat amusing yet related sayings that have stuck in my head over the years? 'Words lie, the mode of expression never lies.' - Ed Taylor 'The surface is the visible core.' - John Ashbery 'Get your money's worth, read beyond plot.' - Ed Taylor 'Sweet are the uses of adversity / Became Sweetheart cabooses of diversity / And Sweet art cow papooses at the university / And sea bar Calpurnia flower havens' re-noosed knees' - Kenneth Koch 'Two-time felon and one-time Pulitzer prize winner declares, crime and art are the only careers with any sex appeal.' - Anonymous Ok, the last one is less-related.

'Stretching things a bit, surely?' That is just the sort of 'so what' flat-line response that deadens all enthusiasm in the brain itself, my friend. What I am saying is that brain science re-creates a sense of the excitement of mental life which we (or perhaps even you) have too often taken for granted. What is more, if we can see in front of our eyes something of what is happening behind them, then we have more belief in those inner workings and the verbal prompts that trigger them. In Liverpool ours is only a modest start with a phenomenon tight enough to bear investigation, but the noun-verb shift is a dense microcosm of other larger effects in Shakespeare's re-wiring (including metaphor). Would you really prefer it if literature is kept out and we let the brain scientists go on and on about how we recognise the colour 'red' instead?

Your preliminary research opens up new vistas of exciting new possibilities for even more discoveries. What are the potential implications for the study of brain activity when a person is learning a new language? In that case, he or she is suddenly faced with even more new structures, words, constructions, and symbolism than is found in Shakespeare? Or is that a different track altogether? I wish you well in your research.

Ken Emmond

"Would you really prefer it if literature is kept out and we let the brain scientists go on and on about how we recognise the colour 'red' instead?"

Er, no, that isn't what I was suggesting.

Enthusiasm is fine, although it can make one write with unnecessary bombast. To voice scepticism is not the same as "deadening all enthusiasm in the brain itself, my friend."

You make 2 claims - first, that Shakespeare's syntax changes the routings of the brain, second, that this creates "an emergent consciousness paradoxically undetermined by the structures it still works from". (I am not sure why you call this "paradoxical" by the way - it sounds to me like a premise for all evolutionary change.) This you refer to as a "higher level of consciousness".

To suggest this is "stretching things a bit" is - on reflection - too mild a rebuke for an assertion so dodgy. Seldom can the trappings of science have been so spuriously abused.

All the same, I find it highly entertaining and wish you all the best in your further experiments.

While your research is very interesting, I am not sure I see any conclusive results (perhaps it is due to the fact that I am not versed in neuropsychology). You state that P600 effect is observed when a word violates syntactical structure of a sentence, whether it is a Shakespearean sentence or not. I am not sure why you conclude that in case of a Shakespearean sentence, when this is the only effect observed, the "brain... was primed to work at a higher level". If you equate high P600 with more complex and desired brain activity, then this is observed in case of a gibberish sentence as well. Would be most grateful for a clarification.

This is fascinating stuff, but the lit theory crowd (as ever) seems to miss a basic point. To hear an unfamiliar usage can most certainly open and reveal wonderful new aspects of a thought trying to make its way into words, but what if a badly-chosen word confounds and defeats the meaning?

Inept stuff doesn't make you think, it makes you stall. By the time you have wondered "How shall I compare thee to a breeze-block?" you have stopped thinking. "Is this an interesting and provocative use of words, or is this just a clumsy witless waste of my time?"

This research offers insight into the power of good writing, of that I am sure, but equally might tell us why we would rather chuck some books over the hedge than drive across so many odd jagged bumps in the road. It is the vanity of many bad writers that we simply need to know more, understand more, to appreciate the glory of what they have made. No, and phooey. The thing about Shakespeare is that although there are references at which we can only guess, the words do the work. If he sticks in a dissonance, it will probably be one of the very best dissonances you've ever heard. One you will still be thinking about when you go to bed.

Any born fool can make the mind zig and zag. Just by describing something randomly as having a "kingfisher cuckoo-clock sheen" I can make you rummage like mad. Kingfisher = multi-coloured?; cuckoo-clock = Orson Welles?; sheen - is that Jewish? Coming up with a novel combination of words is no trick at all - doing it right, so that something important is transmitted, is very different.

I loved this article and this follow up discussion is exciting to me as a lover and teacher of classical rhetoric. The BYU site is wonderful. Here are a couple more helpful resources.

There is a new program called The Lost Tools of Writing that systematically teaches high school students these "schemes and tropes" that you might be interested in. You can see it at www.circeinstitute.org. You will also be interested in a book by Sister Miriam Joseph entitled Shakespeare's Use of the Arts of Language, recently republished by Paul Dry Books. She offers extended examples of many of the tools Shakespeare used. What I like about the article above is that it indicates once again the vast impracticality of pragmatic approaches to learning. We are only beginning to learn how the brain works. To dump 2000 years of practice because of these tiny little lessons is downright silly. Now these tiny little lessons are beginning to show the benefit of the ancient traditions, though it is still much too early to allow them to alter teaching methods signficantly. To see a defense of the modern anti-rhetoric position, read "The Places and the Figures" by IA Richards, perhaps most easily located in Elizabethan Poetry, ed. Alpers, Paul, Oxford U Press, 1967.

You miss the point: the Shakespearian functional shift registers high P600 - WITHOUT effect in relation to N400. It isn't just about high P600 on its own. But I agree that we do need to know more about what this means and where exactly in the brain this takes place. We are currently completing the MEG and fMRI parts of the original experiment, and are now in the process this month (March 2008) of setting up stimuli for further experimentation.
I say to those contributors who fear that this is reductive: what we are doing is looking at one tool which Shakespeare knew instinctively to be a powerful instrument. Functional shift has compression and energy in it - flourishing in the freer grammatical world of the Elizabethans; close to the shift of senses that goes into that other characteristic tool of Shakespeare's - namely, metaphor. I like the idea that it brings words and the brain to greater life. It is something that of course relates to other poets, other writers (think of the varied use of subordinate clauses in George Eliot): what I am thinking about is how dense shifts in syntax in front of the reader's eyes may lock into analogous pathways behind the eyes and change them. The interest shown in this long and continuing series of comments is encouraging to me.
Philip Davis