Watch it lean

Here is the idea you can actually play with. Below is the trophy-and-suitcase sentence. The word "it" is doing the looking, and the bars show how much it leans on each other word: how strong each match was, how big a pour each word makes into the blend.

Flip the last word between "big" and "small" and watch the weights move. Nothing about "it" changes. But change that one final word and the heavy bar jumps from "trophy" to "suitcase," because the want-ad "it" holds up now matches a different chest-card best. That jump is the machine doing what you did in your head a few slides ago, made visible.

Notice how little weight lands on "the," "in," "because." They are scaffolding, and attention learns to all but ignore them. The lean goes where the meaning is.