 With a non-word like that, in other words, one that has no meaning, you're reacting purely to the sound. And this particular sound, snung-coople, it makes people chuckle. Westbury discovered this while working on a study that had nothing to do with humour. His team was looking at aphasia, a form of brain damage that affects people's ability to process language. They asked participants to look at non-words among a sea of random letters on a screen. When snung-coople came up,