A note in parsing

THE wording of the above title is spurious, and deliberately so – but more about it later. In Lewis Carroll’s book, Through the Looking Glass, Humpty Dumpty says, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” In the real world, however, such a cavalier attitude in the use of words does not carry a person far.

To wit, I can speak Tamil, but the problem is that nobody can make sense of the words (actually sounds) that I may mouth. For that matter, I can speak any language on earth – to an undiscerning audience!