Re: colorless green ideas

Quoting Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...>:

> That's interesting. I guess Chomsky will be reminded
> as a philosoph, because everybody can understand this
> example in his own way, and make his own conclusions
> about it, even if it was not at all what he actually
> meant.
>
> Maybe there is a better example of the distortion
> between "syntactically correct" and "semantically
> correct. It goes like that:
> - "I thought I'd try and find my way to the top of
> that hill -"
> "When you say "hill,"" the Queen interrupted, "I could
> show you hills in comparison with which you'd call
> that a valley".
> and it's of course from Lewis Carroll.
>
> What the Red Queen says would be more difficult to
> interpret any logical way than colorless green ideas
> sleeping furiously. I'm sure that the conlangers,
> having much imagination and talent, WILL find some,
> but what use would it be, if Carroll himself describes
> this as "nonsense".
To me, it seems like mere hyperbole for emphasis. I frequently use expressions
like "compared to X, Y is less than nothing".

                                                      Andreas