THINKER'S ALMANAC - February 1

How do colorless green ideas sleep?

Subject:  Syntax and Semantics - Chomsky’s “Colorless Green Ideas”

Event:  Noam Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures published, 1957

Syntax and vocabulary are overwhelming constraints -- the rules that run us.  Language is using us to talk -- we think we’re using the language, but language is doing the thinking, we’re its slavish agents.  --Harry Mathews 

Today is the birthday of linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky, who was born in Philadelphia in 1928.  Chomsky spent more than 50 years as a professor at MIT and has authored over 100 books. Chomsky has been called “the father of modern linguistics” and is one of the founders of the field of cognitive science.  Despite all of his accomplishments, Chomsky is perhaps best known for a single sentence:

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

                                                            Image by Екатерина Гусева from Pixabay 

Published in his 1957 book Semantic Structures, Chomsky’s famous sentence illustrates the difference between two essential elements of language:  syntax and semantics.  Syntax relates to the grammar of a language or the order in which words are combined to construct sentences. Semantics, in contrast, relates to the meaning of individual words. Chomsky’s sentence illustrates the difference between syntax and semantics, showing that a grammatically or syntactically correct sentence can be constructed that is semantically nonsensical.

Of course we can construct zany sentences all day for entertainment purposes, but to truly communicate our thoughts to an audience, we must craft sentences that synthesize both syntax and semantics to make sense.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the difference between syntax and semantics, and how does Chomsky’s famous sentence illustrate the difference?

Challenge - Strange Semantic-less Syntax Sings Soporifically:  What are some adjectives, nouns, verbs, and adverbs that all begin with the same letter of the alphabet? Try your hand at constructing a syntactically correct, yet semantically nonsensical sentence.  For an added layer of interest, use alliteration by selecting words that begin with the same letter.

Begin by brainstorming as many adjectives, nouns, verbs, and adverbs as you can.  Then, select randomly from your list, filling in words in the following order:

Adjective + adjective + noun + verb + adverb

For example:

Angry, ambivalent aardvarks argue awkwardly.

or

Zany, zymolytic zookeepers zoom zealously.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:

-February 1, 1709:  On this day Alexander Selkirk, the real-life castaway who inspired Daniel Defoe’s book Robinson Crusoe (1917), was rescued.    Selkirk spend four years alone on a desert island off the coast of South America, surviving on the goats that he hunted on the island.  Defoe’s fictional account of Selkirk’s experiences when on to become one of the most widely read books in history and is recognized today as the first work of realistic fiction.

-February 1, 1852:  On this day, Henry David Thoreau recorded a rant in his journal, enumerating the idiocy of the California Gold Rush:

The recent rush to California and the attitude of the world, even of its philosophers and prophets, in relation to it appears to me to reflect the greatest disgrace on mankind.  That so many are ready to get their living by the lottery of gold-digging without contributing any value to society, and that the great majority who stay at home justify them in this both by precept and example! . . . . The hot that roots his own living, and so makes manure, would be ashamed of such company.

-February 1, 1974:  Peter Benchley’s novel Jaws was published.  The idea for the book, Benchley’s first novel, began ten years earlier when he read a news story about a 4,550-pound Great White shark caught off the beaches of Long Island, New York.  The brief news story sparked Benchley’s imagination:  “And I thought right then, ‘What if one of these things came round and wouldn’t go away?”

-National Freedom Day - Every February 1st:  Inspired by President Lincoln’s signing of the 13th Amendment on February 1, 1865, Major Richard Robert Wright, a former slave, lobbied in the 1940s to have this day designated “National Freedom Day.”  After Wright’s death in 1947, Congress passed a bill in 1948 to make February 1 National Freedom Day.  Later, in 1976, the name was changed to Black History Day.

Sources:  

1-”Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” Psychology Wiki.

Reading Check:

-What is the difference between syntax and semantics?

-In the sentence “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” what part of speech is the word “sleep”?