Check out this video if you’re interested. It’s pretty long, but I think gives a pretty good starting point for the mood of this post. It isn’t necessary to watch. I just want to share it.
The video to me demonstrates the ability language has as a meaningful tool to describe real-world scenarios. There is an important statement in the field of linguistics which, in reference to a language’s ability to explicate, is a perfectly fine sentence fragment but purports no real-world scenario. The statement is
colorless green ideas sleep furiously,
and I wish now to give some semantic definition to it.
Upon first glance, it would seem that the statement is nonsensical. The statement was formulated by Noam Chomsky to demonstrate a generative grammar producing a category mistake. It is a statement perfectly grammatical, yet supposedly unfounded in the natural world. The following is a derivation of the sentence in such a way hoping to give proper semantic meaning to the statement, signifying the statement as grammatically and semantically correct.
Firstly consider the statement in two separations, the first a noun phrase consisting of colorless green ideas, the second a verb phrase sleep furiously. We will start with the second part, then move on to the first part, in the end reassembling the two separations.
To Sleep Furiously
Let’s start with the verb phrase. What does it mean to sleep furiously? To do anything furiously means one of two things according to the definition of furiously.
fu·ri·ous·ly /ˈfyo͞orēəslē/ adverb
In an extremely angry manner.
In an extremely energetic or hurried manner; intensely.
Either the thing is done in an extremely angry manner, or the thing is done extremely hurriedly or intensely such that it will have appeared to be done with an unnaturally large amount of energy. By either definition, meaning can be given to the verb phrase to sleep furiously.
In consideration of the first definition, let there exist a child furious over the rules set by his parents about going to bed at a certain hour. In this case, imagine that the child is in the middle of doing something he believes to be important, where all of a sudden the clock displays a certain time so that his parents interrupt his progress and tell him he needs to go to bed. The child wants nothing else but to finish the work he’s started. He begins to see his motivation crumbling before his eyes. How could he possibly ever again find the determination he’s set for himself to finish this project? Tears begin to well up in his eyes. He begins to yell emotionally about it. He cannot stand that his own parents would make him feel this way when it should have been obvious to them how passionate he had become over the project. Now he must angrily retreat to his room, where for many moments he will lie awake before drifting to sleep furiously.
In consideration of the second definition of the word furiously, let the same furious child exist as before under the same conditions, this time with the additional consideration that the child is working in his room on the project. Before being told that he will need to go to bed, the child decides to try outsmarting his parents. He hatches a plan to pretend to already be fast asleep when his parents enter the room. As he hears his parents make their way almost to the barrier of his domain, he energetically traverses his quarters attempting to thwart the enemy of his parents seeking to witness his transgressions. He makes his way onto his bed covered in blankets and pillows. In a hurried manner he throws the covers over the top of his body and intensely pretends to lie unconscious as his parents open the door. Upon entering, they witness nothing but the body of their child secretly sleeping furiously.
Colorless Green Ideas
The noun phrase in the question is a little harder to put an exact epistemic rationalization to. In philosophy there are several definitions given to the word idea:
i·de·a /īˈdēə/ noun (philosophy)
an eternally existing pattern of which individual things in any class are imperfect copies.
a concept of pure reason, not empirically based in experience.
Since we are looking to make sense of the phrase in consideration of naturally occurring phenomena, it is fair to throw out the second definition being that it contradicts the point we are trying to prove. In light of this, the first definition becomes more desirable. It is an existing pattern. Considering the definition of idea from a less philosophical point of view, we attain something less close to something patterned but more abstract. It is:
i·de·a /īˈdēə/ noun
a concept or mental impression.
It is something expressible by words though not entirely, and exists prior to the words existing; something causally formulated by human consciousness and surreal (not existing in concrete form). In consideration of this, it does not make sense that an idea is green. Though, from a surreal perspective, people still attribute abstract meaning sometimes to the adjective green. If one forms the sense of green to mean go in the same way that modern people associate the green signals at stoplights to me go, then green might be attachable to such a condition the same as the moving word go. A green idea could be an idea intended to be or do something at the point one calls something going, similar to stoplights signaling cars to move upon changing color.
Putting Them Together
Again considering the furious child who schemed to outwit his parents, it seems plausible to say that the child’s enemy initiated his cunning idea. Let’s say that it was not this intention of the enemy, however, that intended the moving of the scheme. Rather let us say that the child’s ideas are things already in motion to be suddenly halted by the child’s parents’ initiation. They were grand ideas on a trajectory of completion, then suddenly laid to rest.
In the haste of it all, the child had to furiously place his eyelids shut, leaving his ideas uncompleted. The ideas are left like an unfinished coloring book looking scribbled upon next to crayons on the ground. In the mind of the child put to bed, the ideas are outlines of things started but unfortunately amounting to nothing in the end. His colorless green ideas sleep furiously.