I designed a card game once where each of these words had a specialized meaning in the rules—colorless was a particular modifier, green was the color of the card, ideas were a kind of card,...
I designed a card game once where each of these words had a specialized meaning in the rules—colorless was a particular modifier, green was the color of the card, ideas were a kind of card, sleeping was a phase of your turn which applied to certain cards, and to do a phase furiously meant to apply that phase twice per turn. Then one of the cards had the text "colorless green ideas sleep furiously", which made perfect sense within the context of the game. The point being that words only have meaning within a context of use, and you can create meaning by changing the context.
This short 1997 article by David Policar discusses whether the famous sentence "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously", often used as an example of a grammatical but meaningless sentence, actually...
This short 1997 article by David Policar discusses whether the famous sentence "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously", often used as an example of a grammatical but meaningless sentence, actually mean something.
That's interesting; don't really know enough about what are rules vs conventions to come up with another nonsense sentence, but it's fun to think about. Was about to say that web page looks pretty...
That's interesting; don't really know enough about what are rules vs conventions to come up with another nonsense sentence, but it's fun to think about.
You're very welcome, and thanks for mentioning the song! That was a fun one to listen. I am preparing for a linguistics MA and studying basics (I'll be going from philology to linguistics), and...
You're very welcome, and thanks for mentioning the song! That was a fun one to listen.
I am preparing for a linguistics MA and studying basics (I'll be going from philology to linguistics), and hearing a lot about this sentence, I thought that any grammatical sentence should have some meaning (given meaning is something the listener produces in their own mind), and when I searched for "colourless green ideas sleep furiously is meaningful", this was the second hit.
This reinforces, for me, the idea that signs are indeed arbitrary: in this case they are composed of words and various concepts linked to them, and not phonemes. It's like the word shuthenck is nonsense, until someone imagines that it's an onomatopoeic word that means "the sound a mechanical typewriter makes when the right margin is encountered" and tells it to someone else or writes it down, it exists as a word. Or like when a writer invents a word: it is out there, and one can give it a meaning utilising the context and the structure of the word.
Maybe it's because I'm only discovering it, but language is a fascinating toy to play with also when approached scientifically, it seems!
I searched for this phrase, because the article says "I believe it was first coined by Noam Chomsky, though I could be wrong." and I wanted to check if the sentence did have a known origin. The...
when I searched for "colourless green ideas sleep furiously is meaningful", this was the second hit.
I searched for this phrase, because the article says "I believe it was first coined by Noam Chomsky, though I could be wrong." and I wanted to check if the sentence did have a known origin. The first hit I got was the Wikipedia article dedicated to this phrase, which includes a section about possible meaningful interpretations.
Thanks! Well, I live in Turkey where Wikipedia is blocked, and because I was not using my usual browser which redirects to a mirror, I did not read the Wikipedia article. Thanks for linking it...
Thanks! Well, I live in Turkey where Wikipedia is blocked, and because I was not using my usual browser which redirects to a mirror, I did not read the Wikipedia article. Thanks for linking it though, was interesting to read.
I designed a card game once where each of these words had a specialized meaning in the rules—colorless was a particular modifier, green was the color of the card, ideas were a kind of card, sleeping was a phase of your turn which applied to certain cards, and to do a phase furiously meant to apply that phase twice per turn. Then one of the cards had the text "colorless green ideas sleep furiously", which made perfect sense within the context of the game. The point being that words only have meaning within a context of use, and you can create meaning by changing the context.
This short 1997 article by David Policar discusses whether the famous sentence "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously", often used as an example of a grammatical but meaningless sentence, actually mean something.
That's interesting; don't really know enough about what are rules vs conventions to come up with another nonsense sentence, but it's fun to think about.
Was about to say that web page looks pretty old.
You're very welcome, and thanks for mentioning the song! That was a fun one to listen.
I am preparing for a linguistics MA and studying basics (I'll be going from philology to linguistics), and hearing a lot about this sentence, I thought that any grammatical sentence should have some meaning (given meaning is something the listener produces in their own mind), and when I searched for "colourless green ideas sleep furiously is meaningful", this was the second hit.
This reinforces, for me, the idea that signs are indeed arbitrary: in this case they are composed of words and various concepts linked to them, and not phonemes. It's like the word shuthenck is nonsense, until someone imagines that it's an onomatopoeic word that means "the sound a mechanical typewriter makes when the right margin is encountered" and tells it to someone else or writes it down, it exists as a word. Or like when a writer invents a word: it is out there, and one can give it a meaning utilising the context and the structure of the word.
Maybe it's because I'm only discovering it, but language is a fascinating toy to play with also when approached scientifically, it seems!
I searched for this phrase, because the article says "I believe it was first coined by Noam Chomsky, though I could be wrong." and I wanted to check if the sentence did have a known origin. The first hit I got was the Wikipedia article dedicated to this phrase, which includes a section about possible meaningful interpretations.
Thanks! Well, I live in Turkey where Wikipedia is blocked, and because I was not using my usual browser which redirects to a mirror, I did not read the Wikipedia article. Thanks for linking it though, was interesting to read.