Return-Path: Received: from SEGATE.SUNET.SE by xiron.pc.helsinki.fi with smtp (Linux Smail3.1.28.1 #1) id m0tHtyn-0000ZUC; Tue, 21 Nov 95 16:47 EET Message-Id: Received: from listmail.sunet.se by SEGATE.SUNET.SE (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.0a) with SMTP id 1D185400 ; Tue, 21 Nov 1995 15:47:23 +0100 Date: Tue, 21 Nov 1995 01:52:13 -0800 Reply-To: Dylan Thurston Sender: Lojban list From: Dylan Thurston Subject: Colourless green ideas X-To: Logical Language Group X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Veijo Vilva In-Reply-To: <199511201956.OAA27625@access1.digex.net> Content-Length: 2586 Lines: 63 la lojbab. cusku di'e > ... > 2. Curious green ideas sleep furiously. > ... > Let me know when we agree on the semantics of any of these ... When the famous Chomskian example Colourless green ideas sleep furiously came up in my intro linguistics course last semester, I thought about it and decided it did have a vaguely plausible semantics, which I found amusing. Apologies for the little relevance to lojban. (But you did ask, lojbab...) Let's start with the more plausible parts. (Some of these rely on English idioms, but I hope I explain them.) 'green ideas' makes perfect sense these days: they're environmentalist ideas, as in the platform of the Green Party. 'ideas sleep' is another reasonable metaphor. Ideas could easily lie dormant, latently present but not actively expressed. 'Colourless green' starts to get a bit iffy, but to me that denotes a very pale shade of green. Then 'colourless green ideas' are weak environmentalist ideas, perhaps as espoused by Al Gore. Finally, `ideas sleep furiously' just mean that the ideas are lying dormant but are ready to boil over (become furiously active ideas) at any moment. So to sum up: 'Colourless green ideas sleep furiously' means something like: Weakly environmentalist ideas lie dormant but could start a revolution any day now. But isn't the first version much more vivid? Don't you zo'o agree that you ba'e need to be able to say something like this concisely? I think Lojbab misquoted this example (since in his version, 'curious' doesn't seem to violate any semantic categories), but a similar interpretation would apply. Just so this post will have some content, I wanted to ask a question. Chomsky gave this sentence as an example of a perfectly grammatical statement with no meaning in the real world. Even without the idiomatic expressions and strained interpretations I used above, the sentence asserts a perfectly clear relationship between concepts; it just happens to be one that could not be realized. Sentences like this should not be ruled out by grammar. But the more important question is whether every grammatical statement asserts a well-defined relationship. I think And was arguing that this was the case. But I'm not sure I really understand And's argument. I'd like to see some explicit examples of meaningless statements using PA. I'd also like to see a proposal for the substructure of PA, preferably one that doesn't rule out any current texts. co'o mi'e dilyn (Also, why isn't the ftp site working now? The directory seems to be unreadable.)