英语教学理论与实践4班     陈小丽      2011183

2.对Chomsky的这句话"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously"进行诊断

这个句子虽然语法正确然而却不符合语义。人们在现实生活中也不会说这样的句子，chomsky这个句子很好的证明了语义在语言学习中的重要性。

一一来分析一下该句子：

句子的中心词是ideas,是一个没有生命的抽象概念词，人们看不见也摸不着。colorless和green修饰ideas在语法上虽然正确，然而在语义上：“无色的绿色思想”存在两大矛盾，首先无色和绿色本身是一对矛盾体，思想是一种抽象概念，用颜色来修饰着实不是生活中出现的。再看句子的谓语“sleep”和状语之间的矛盾，sleep表达一种静态状态，说明人处于一种无意识状态，而"furiously愤怒地"则表达一种感情，应该在人们意识清醒时才有的状态，所以日常生活中是不会用furiously 来形容sleep的。再看主语ideas和谓语sleep之间的矛盾，sleep一般是有生命的物体才会有的动作所以与抽象无生命的概念之间也不能搭配。

所以整个句子语义上是现实的。

 

英语教学理论与实践4班       张双双       2011170

“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”

For this sentence, we can diagnose it from the following levels:

Level 1 syntactic level(句法学视角)

Syntax is the study of the rules governing the ways in which such constituents as words, word groups and phrases are combined to form sentences in a language, or the study of the interrelationships between sentential elements.For my part, syntax is the grammar of narrow sense.

According to syntax, a sentence has 3 features:

1        An independent linguisticform and not included by virtue of any grammatical construction in any larger linguistic unit.

1        Not subordinate or subordinated to a larger linguistic form.It is a structurally independent linguistic form.

1        Being called a maximum free form.

Summarizing the above three, the largest unit of grammatical description a grammarian studies or analyzes is sentence.

For a sentence, the external syntax of a construction refers to the properties of the construction as a whole, these properties including terms of clausal type, phrasal type and so on.While the internal syntax of a construction is really a description of the construction’s“make-up”, with the terms such as“subject, predicate, object, determiner, noun”.

On the basis of the above theoretical knowledge, we can analyze this sentence.In this sentence,“colorless green ideas” is a noun phrase, as the subject;“sleep furiously” is a verb phrase, with“sleep” as the predicate and“furiously” as the adverbial.So in the syntactic level, there are no wrong points in this sentence.And it is a grammatically true sentence.

Level 2lexicologicallevel（词汇学视角）

   Lexicology isthe study of lexemes or vocabulary of a language, including formation, (morphological) structure, meaning, collocation, uses and usages of words.

For the sentence“colorless green ideas sleep furiously”, it a right one in syntax, while it is wrong inlexicological level for thefalsecollocation and uses of the words.Thefaults are in the following:

Fault 1:“green” is a type of color, so it could not bemodified by“colorless”,which meanswithout color.

Fault 2:“idea” means thoughts.Thoughts possess no color and could not be modified by“colorless green”.

Fault 3:about“sleep”.Usually it is people who sleep.The ideas could sleep.

Fault 4: sleeping is a state of quietness.When being in the sleeping, there are no sounds or anything concerning sounds.However, the word“furiously” is used to describe the emotion and means one’s emotion can’t be controlled and is filled with fierce elements.So these two words can’t be used together.

From the above four faults, this sentence is a wrong one.

《语言学百问和硕博指南》 侯国金 四川大学出版社? 2009

《语言学教程》第三版 胡壮麟 北京大学出版社 2006.9

 

英语教学理论与实践4班        王晶晶      2011175

"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously"

 In 1957, Noam Chomsky composed a sentence  in his  Syntactic Structures, he used it as an example of a sentence that is grammatically correct (logical form) but semantically nonsensical. The term was originally used in his 1955 thesis "Logical Structures of Linguistic Theory".

S

         

          NP           VP

      Adj.    N.      V.    adv.

          Adj.  n

     Colorless green   ideas     sleep       furiously

(tree diagram for the sentence )

      Although the sentence is grammatically correct, no understandable meaning can be derived from it, and thus it demonstrates the distinction between syntax and semantics.

 Colorless is used to describe something concrete without colors, and green is one kind color mainly standing for new-comer、hopefulness and evironment-friendly condition. Ideas are an abstract word illustrating thoughts in our mind, and furiously is an adverb used to violent and momentary actions while sleep is an quietly and long process, both of which are used by life bodies.So we can get that ①colorless and green are adjectives for concrete thing,while ideas are abstract.②colorless and green( a type of color)are antonym. ③Ideas is an abstract noun, we usually donnot use it along with concrete action-sleep, ④and besides, it is not appropriate to say sleep- quietly and long process and furiously- an adverb for violent and momentary actions togetherly. Though the sentence is grammatically correct, we donot use it in our daily life.

主语（subject）是执行句子的行为或动作的主体，主语可以这些列词类或形式来担任：名词，代词，名词化了的动词，形容词，分词，副词或数词等，动词不定式或不定式短语，从句等。

谓语（predicate verb）是对主语动作或状态的陈述或说明,指出“做什么”、“是什么”或“怎么样。谓语动词的位置一般在主语之后。谓语由简单动词或动词短语(助动词或情态动词＋主要动词）构成，依据其在句中繁简程度可把谓语分为简单谓语和复合谓语两类。不论何种时态，语态，语气，凡由一个动词（或动词词组）构成的谓语都是简单谓语

宾语(object)是动作、行为的对象，是动作的承受者。宾语由名词、代词、不定式或相当于名词的词、短语来担任。英语的及物动词后必须有宾语。宾语一般放及物动词之后，它和及物动词一起说明主语做什么。说明，除及物动词有宾语之外，英语介词后面也要有宾语。另外，某些形容词如worth,careful等后也可有宾语。宾语有直接宾语和间接宾语之分。即指人的间接宾语和指物的直接宾语，这两个宾语称为“双宾语”

参考：http://dict.youdao.com

 

 

英语教学理论与实践4班        罗娟     2011190

What are the problems about the sentence “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”? How to avoid them?

This sentence was created by Noam Chomsky who believed that there must be a much deeper level for a sentence excepting surface structure people can hear in the speech or see in written works. The sentence “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” is quite correct grammatically but not acceptable in meaning. It is well-formed in sentence structure for the adjectives “colorless” and “green” are used to modify the noun “ideas” in the sentence following the structure of “adjective+noun”, for the adverb “furiously” is employed to modify the verb “sleep” following the structure of “verb+adverb” and for the sentence also follows the principle of concord—the subject, a plural noun “ideas”, is followed by a plural verb “sleep”.

However, when we discuss whether a sentence is well-informed or not, we should not only pay attention to its (surface) structure but also care about the reasonableness of its meaning. First, “Green” means “being the color of grass or the leaves of most plants and trees” according to the dictionary (Oxford Advanced Learners' English-Chinese Dictionary, the sixth edition), while “colorless” refers to  being without color. How can a kind of color be without color at the same? The expression of “colorless green” is contradiction in terms. Second, “sleep” usually indicates that your mind and body are not active or in the state of being “subconscious” according to Sigmund Freud's theory; “furious” refers to “being very angry” or “being with energy, speed or anger”, both of which indicate the state of being “active”. This may lead to the actual move of the body. Therefore, the expression “sleep furiously”, as a matter of fact, is also contradictory in meaning. It is impossible for our mind to be active and not active at the same time, just as it's impossible to find a flowing river in which the water does not flow. At least, it seems not easy to found a proper psychological mechanism to explain this contradictory phenomenon. Third, “ideas” can be plans, thoughts, systems and the like, which are produced or made by or come from human beings' mind. Only the animate human beings are with the ability of thinking, while the inanimate “ideas” are just the product of thinking. It is illogical for an inanimate object to function as the animate. An inanimate object can act with animation metaphorically, but the metaphor work with its own rules which are conventionalized by people in a community or communities. A metaphor is created based on the similarity or similarities between the target and the source in most cases or there must be some motivation for it. However, the expression “ideas sleep furiously” is not accepted conventionally in meaning. Fourth, the inanimate “ideas” itself cannot be without the emotion of the animate like human beings. Ideas can be good or bad but never being able to sleep or sleep with emotion—“sleep furiously” in logic.

After Chomsky found it was not enough to describe or explain all our sentences through his original theory he presented his new standard theory, one of its components is the “semantic component” which plays a curial role in finding a way to avoid those problems in the sentence mentioned above. There may be two independent processes in our mind: one controls the semantics and the other control the structure. After the structure is chosen for a sentence, its semantics or meaning will play an important role in constructing a sentence, or after its meaning has been fixed, the sentence structure should form in corresponding sentence structure (among many structures). Since the center of the subject of the sentence is the “ideas”, the meaning of the modifiers “colorless” and “green” should also agree with the center; after the meaning of words are fixed to show some idea in a sentence, correspondingly, proper sentence structure should be employed for it. Proper syntactic relations include positional relations or word order, relations of substitutability and relations of co-occurrence. Take the word order as an example. It is not proper to put “colorless” and “green” together to modify the same word since they are contradictory in meaning. It's not acceptable conventionally for the adverb “furiously” to be used after the verb “sleep”, either, because the inanimate noun cannot perform the action of the animate in most cases.

In a word, a grammatically correct sentence does not mean a well-formed sentences which is “partly determined by meaning or the semantic constraints of the words used in it”(hou 2009: 68）.

References:

1         侯国金 《语言学百问和硕博指南》

2.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_furiously

3．Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously Revisited: A Statistical Perspective by Florencia Reali, Rick Dale and Morten H. Christiansen

 

 

英语教学理论与实践4班     陈利民    2011182  作业7

对Chomsky的这句话"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously"进行诊断。

"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is a sentence composed by Noam Chomskyin his 1957 Syntactic Structuresas an example of a sentencethat is grammaticallycorrect  but semanticallynonsensical. The term was originally used in his 1955 thesis "Logical Structures of Linguistic Theory". Although the sentence is grammaticallycorrect, no understandablemeaning can be derived from it, and thus it demonstratesthe distinctionbetween syntaxand semantics. As an example of a category mistake, it was used to show inadequacy of the then-popular probabilistic models of grammar, and the need for more structured models.

（http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_furiously）

Let’s look at the sentence in details, the sentence is grammatically correct and complete; “ideas” is the subject, “sleep” as the predicate, “colorless green” modify the subject and “furiously” modifies the predicate. However, when we turn to the logic meaning, every part of the sentence seems illogical; “ideas” is an abstract word, how can it sleep? We all know that only the animate can possibly sleep; and even if it can sleep, how can it sleeps furiously, we can't fall asleep if we are furious, it is absurd in the meaning; what's more, the modifiers of the subject are semantically contradictory.

However, if we analyze the meaning of the sentence in a figurative way, it can make sense and can be logically right. A green idea may be mean a brand new idea, but the idea is also colorless, because it is plain and dull; and to sleep means to be the state of inactivity, so in this way “furiously” can be meaningful. And the whole sentence can be mean that: “ A new but plain idea cannot be expressed in the furious way.

 

 

 

英语教学理论与实践4班        刘欣媛       2011188

What's wrong with the sentence “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”?

If you always use windows office to write English paper, you will know that if you spell a wrong word, the computer will warn you with an underline. And sometime if you write a wrong sentence, the system will also warn you, but sometime it does not do that. Why? I think because the computer is just an artificial intelligence. Even the computer has some wisdom but still can not understand many things. Just like the sentence in the title, “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”, people will say it is not a sentence, it is just a combine of words. However, to some degree, the computer may be right; the sentence may be a right one. I will talk about this problem from two aspects, first is from the syntax and Chomsky' universal grammar, the second is from the semantics.

First of all, I will discuss this sentence from the view of syntax and Chomsky' universal grammar. The definition of syntax, according to HuZhuanglin, “is the study of how sentences are properly formed out of words of a language.”1 In other words, syntax studies how words are combined to form sentences and studies the rules that govern the formation of sentence. Therefore, if the words in the sentence are right, and follow the right rule like S+V+O, the sentence will may be right. What' more, according to the Chomsky' universal grammar, it tells us some useful information. “Universal grammar is a theory of knowledge, not of behavior; its concern is with the internal structure of the human mind.”2 So, this theory suggests that some rules of grammar are engraved in the brain of human, and people will learn it without being taught. One important rule of universal grammar is structure dependency. “Structure dependency asserts that knowledge of language relies on the structural relationship in the sentence rather than on the sequence of words.”3 That means, sentences are formed by phrase structure, like NP or VP, it could say if the NP and VP are right, and they follow a certain structure, they can form a right sentence. Therefore, the sentence “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” could be grammatical right but meaningless.

Second, I will talk about the sentence from the angle of the semantics. “Semantics refers to the study of communication of meaning through language, or simply, the study of meaning.”4 in fact, I think, on matter people write or speak, they want to others can understand them; and they want others to their meaning. If the listener can not understand the speaker, the communication, as I see, is meaningless. If the reader can not see the implied meaning of the passage, or even can not understand the sentence, we can say the author is not successful, because the author failed to express his thoughts and opinions. Hence, we can say, from the semantics' view, the sentence “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” is a wrong sentence.

To sum up, for most of people, the sentence “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” is a wrong one, because it is meaningless and dose not express any ideas. However, for some linguistics like Chomsky, this sentence may be right, because could be grammatical right. Therefore, when people want say or write sentences should combine the knowledge between the syntax and semantics. A right and good sentence, I think, should be followed the certain structure and can understood by other people.

1 胡壮麟 姜望琪，《语言学高级教程》，北京市：北京大学出版社，2002，第148页。

2 Vivian Cook, Mark Newson Chomsky’s Universal Grammar: An Introduction 北京市：外语与研究出版社，2000，第1页。

3 Ibid, 第3页。

4 侯国金，《语言学百问和硕博指南》，成都市：四川大学出版社，2009，第134页。

 

英语教学理论与实践4班   吴小佩     2011174

1.POC(part of speech)和SPO(主谓宾)的匹配

In grammar, a part of speech (also a word class, a lexical class, or a lexical category) is a linguistic category of words (or more precisely lexical items), which is generally defined by the syntactic or morphological behavior of the lexical item in question. English words have been traditionally classified into eight lexical categories or parts of speech (and are still done so in most dictionaries):

              Noun: any abstract or concrete entity

              Pronoun: any substitute for a noun or noun phrase

              Adjective: any qualifier of a noun

              Verb: any action or state of being

              Adverb: any qualifier of an adjective, verb, or other adverb

              Preposition: any establisher of relation and syntactic context

              Conjunction: any syntactic connector

              Interjection: any emotional greeting (or "exclamation")

Although these are the traditional eight English parts of speech, modern linguists have been able to classify English words into even more specific categories and sub-categories based on function. The four main parts of speech in English, namely nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, are labeled form classes as well.

在英语中，句子的主语通常是由名词（Noun）以及名词化的词和短语、代词（Pronoun）的主格、名词性的短语以及非谓语形式（动词不定式、现在分词和过去分词）充当，谓语主要由动词（Verb）充当，宾语通常是由名词以及名词化的词和短语、代词的宾格、名词性的短语以及非谓语形式（动词不定式、现在分词和过去分词）充当。

侯国金，语言学百问和硕博指南[M],2009

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Part_of_speech

2.对Chomsky的这句话"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously"进行诊断。

1. 此句中位于动词为“sleep”，那sleep” 的主语应该是有生命的或有灵体，而此句中ideas 是无生命体，不可以作为sleep” 的主语。

2.作为主语的名词性短语中心词 ideas 是抽象的事物，是没有颜色的，因此不能用green 来修饰它。

3. 修饰词Colorless和 green 的意思是矛盾的，Colorless 是无色的，而green是绿色的，两者不能同时使用，是逻辑错误。

4.副词furiously 与谓语动词sleep 搭配不当， furiously是表示情感的副词，而按照常理可知，修饰动词sleep只能是表示方式或状态的副词，如安静的睡着（sleep quietly）。

总之，从结构句法上来看这句话"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously"是正确的，但是从语义和语用层面来看是错误的，在实际使用中也是不存在的。

 

 

英语教学理论与实践4班       郑三       2011191

Actually, the sentence “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” is an example given by Noam Chomsky to argue against a theory called associative chain theory put forward by behaviorists. The theory states that a sentence consists of a chain of associations between individual words in a sentence. To put it briefly, each word in a sentence serves as a stimulus for the next word.

To refute such a theory, Chomsky crested this sentence: Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. He claimed that if sentences are created by associations between words, then this sentence can never be explained, because the word ‘colorless' rarely remind us of word ‘green', and in turn we can hardly associate the word ‘green' with ‘ideas'. So do the rest of the words in the sentence. Each word in the sentence seems awkward to be collocated with the next and it is really hard to say there are associations between these words. Therefore, such a sentence could not possibly exist. However, as we all know, to create this sentence is not that difficult. Just as Chomsky put it, associations between words could not possibly explain the existence of sentences such as “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” Even though the associations between these words are almost nonsexist, the sentence is syntactically acceptable.

 

Carrol W. David. 2011. Psychology of Language. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching And Research Press and Cengage Learning.

 

英语教学理论与实践4班       温艳君            2011172

II.Analyse the sentence “colorless green ideas sleep furiously”.

Grammatically speaking, this is a perfect sentence which is consisted of a NP and a VP. According to chaumsky’s T-G, we can draw such a diagram of this sentence:

               S

              

        NP            VP

       

Adj          NP   V      Adv

             

         Adj    N                     

 

 

Colorless  green  ideas sleep  furiously

 

However, in the sense of semantics, this is a totally problematic sentence with the following several mistakes or contradictions：

1.      “Ideas”are something about human thought, which is unanimate, but “sleep” is often used to describe the animate things like human beings or animals, rather than the abstract objects like thought and mind.

2.      The adverb furiously is, more often than not, used to modify one’s mood or the strength of the power, but can’t be used to describe the way of the action of “sleep”, which we can’t imagine its meaning in a normal way.

3.“Ideas”is an abstract thing which we can’t see with our eyes, and it has no form ,nor color. So neither the word “colorless nor green can be used before “ideas”.

4. The two words “colorless” and “green” are contradicted.

 

As far as I’m concerned, this sentence seems like Henry sweet’s favorite example “The philosopher pulled the lower jaw of the hen”, which he illustrated as an ‘arithmetical fallacy’.

 According to vikipedia,the sentence can be given an interpretation through polysemy. we can interpret colorless as "nondescript" and green as "immature" figuratively. Therefore,we may reconstruct the sentence as "nondescript immature ideas have violent nightmares", a phrase with less oblique semantics. On the other hand, the phrase can have an alternative meaning too, if green is understood to mean "newly-formed" and sleep can be used to figuratively express mental or verbal dormancy. An equivalent sentence would be "Newly formed bland ideas are inexpressible in an infuriating way."

 

英语教学理论与实践4班        林莹       2011171

 

对Chomsky的这句话"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously"进行诊断。

  

 "Syntax" is the study of the rules governing the ways in which such constituents as words, word groups and phrases are combined to form sentences in a language, or the study of the interrelationships between sentential elements. In a narrow sense, "grammar" refers to "syntax". And "Semantics" refers to the study of the communication of meaning through language. So generally speaking, this sentence "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is correct on the perspective of syntax, while nonsensical lexically.

1. On the syntactic perspective

One of the central concepts in grammatical description is "phrase structure" and "phrase structure rules" are syntactic rules that specify the permissible sequences of constituents in a language. The sentence "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" has a syntactic description as follows:

   

S                  

 

                            NP                      VP

 

 

                  adj.     adj. P            V        adv.

 

 

                          

                        adj.   N              

 

 

                       

              colorless  green   ideas       sleep     furiously

 

(Figure 1.)

 

From the figure shown above, S is rewritten as a NP + a VP; NP → adj.(colorless) + adj. P; VP → V(sleep) + adv(furiously) ; and adj. P → adj. (green)+ N(ideas).

The internal syntax of this sentence deals with " attribute, subject, predicate and the predicate complement ".

Attribute    +    Subject  +  Predicate  +  Predicate Complement

Colorless green    ideas        sleep            furiously

(Ex. 1)

    From the example generalized above , it's obvious that this sentence given by Chomsky is grammatically well-formed. 

 

2. On the semantic perspective

The meaning of a sentence is obviously related to the meanings of the words used in it. But it is also obvious that the former is not simply the sum total of the latter. The words used in this sentence are contradictory to each other:

①. According to Merriam-Webster, "colorless" means "lacking color", which is in conflict with "green". Generally speaking, both of the color words are usually used to modify the object instead of being adopted to describe the "idea" that is a visible representation of a conception or a formulated thought or opinion. 

②. When used as a verb, "sleep" refers to rest with your eyes closed and your mind and body not active. It is the behavior peculiar to the man kind or the animals. So how can "ideas", the abstract concept "sleep"?

③. According to the definition given above, "your mind and body are not active" during sleep. However, "furious" indicates the meaning of "very angry". Accordingly, the collocation of "sleep" and "furiously" doesn't accord to biology.

Although "sentences using the same words may mean quite differently if they are arranged in different orders", this sentence can not conform to this theory since the attributes "colorless & green" cannot be used describe the subject "ideas" in nature and the predicate "sleep" could never go hand in hand with the predicate "furiously". So no matter how their positions are changed, the correct semantics can never be reached.

Evidently, "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is syntactically well-formed but semantically anomalous.

 

 

参考书目：

1. 侯国金, 《语言学百问和硕博指南》[M]. 成都: 四川大学出版社, 2009.

2. 胡壮麟, 姜望琪, 《语言学高级教程》[M]. 北京: 北京大学出版社, 2002.

3. 胡壮麟, 《语言学教程》[M]. 北京: 北京大学出版社, 1988.

4. David W.Carroll, 《语言心理学》[M]. 北京: 外语教学与研究出版社, 2008.

5. A.S. Hornby, 《牛津高阶英汉双解词典》[Z]. 北京: 商务印书馆, 2004.

6. Merriam Webster, 《Merriam Webster Dictionary》[Z]. U.S.: Merriam Webster, U.S., 2004.

 

英语教学理论与实践4班           王莹莹        2011185

对Chomsky的这句话"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously"进行诊断。

    “句法自治”是Chomsky“语言自治”假设的核心命题，自20世纪50年代生成语法理论创立以来，Chomsky句法自治思想伴随其生成语法理论经历了语义缺失、解释语义、语义紧缩、模块论阐释和方法论自然主义阐释五个阶段。在这五个阶段的发展过程中，以Chomsky为代表的解释语义派坚持认为句法描写与语义完全不相关，并且认为语义的解释决定于语法。不管在哪个阶段，Chomsky的基本观点均未变:句法是一个自立的形式系统，语言的形式不取决于语义或功能，句法研究要尽量从句法内部寻求解释，句法和语义之间有一个泾渭分明的界限。（姜孟,2009）

而以Lakoff为代表的生成语义学派则认为，在句法、音系、语义三个部分中，语义是出发点，句法以语义为基础。句子 "The stone is hungry" 之所以不成立，不是句法不允许，而是语义不允许，逻辑不允许。生成语义学者认为：现实合格的句子不仅必须语法上正确，也必须在逻辑和语义上正确。

"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously"是乔姆斯基很有名的一个例句，这句话合乎句法结构，句子各成分间的关系也正常，但在语义上异常。它虽然合乎语法，但是不能传递意义，也无法被理解，因而不可取。类似的还有下面一个句子，"I like my coffee with cream and socks." 虽然符合句法，但是语义反常，因而也是不可取的。

 

参考文献

［1］David W.Carroll.2008(8).语言心理学［M］.北京：外语教学与研究出版社.

［2］侯国金. 2009. 语言学百问和硕博指南［M］. 成都: 四川大学出版社.

［3］姜孟.2009(6). 句法自治：争鸣与论据［J］.外国语文.

英语教学理论与实践4班     王定敏     2011177

2.对Chomsky这句话“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”进行诊断。

‘Colorless green ideas sleep furiously’ is a sentence composed by Noam Chomsky in his 1957 Syntactic Structures. 

Syntax is study of rules governing the ways in which such constituents as words, word groups and phrases are combined to form sentences in a language, or the study of the interrelationship between sentential elements. And syntax is the generative part, in the sense that armed with ‘syntax’ people can generate well-formed sentences and that ‘generative grammar’ is rooted in the ‘syntax’ of people’s mind and explains how the system of rules and principles work for languages. 

Chomsky’s Classical Theory is characterized by three features: (1) emphasis on generative ability of language; (2) introduction of transformational rules; and (3) grammatical description regardless of meaning. Chomsky believes that a grammar is seen as a system of finite rules generating an infinite number of sentences, and the rules must meet such requirements as generative, simple, explicit, exhaustive and recursive. Here we can see that rules generating sentences without the consideration of meaning of the sentence.

The Standard Theory is marked by Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Chomsky, 1965), in which Chomsky made a remarkable change by including a semantic component in his grammatical model. He says that a generative grammar should consist of three components: syntactic, phonological and semantic. The semantic component makes semantic interpretations on the deep structure.

In the Extended Standard Theory, Chomsky revised his Standard Theory. The most remarkable change is that Chomsky now completely puts semantic interpretation in the surface structure. And, accordingly, from semantic interpretation rules is derived logical form representation. Hence, semantics was left out of the domain of syntax. 

When Chomsky argued against the associative chain theory advanced by behaviorists, He exemplified the sentence to show his point. The associative chain theory states that a sentence consists of a chain of associations between individual words in a sentence. Put another way, each word in a sentence servers as a stimulus for the next word, and thus the entire sentence is produced left to right (at least for European languages). Chomsky argues that associations between words could not possibly explain the existence of sentences like ‘Colorless green ideas sleep furiously’. Although the associations between these words are almost nonexistent, the sentence is syntactically acceptable.

There are two definitions of sentence. Traditionally, sentence is the minimum part of language that expresses a complete thought. Bloomfield (1935) defined the sentence as “one included by virtue of any grammatical construction in any larger linguistic form”. So many linguists adopt Bloomfield’s definition that uses the standard of grammar instead of the standard of semantics. However, a well-formed sentence is partly determined by meaning or the semantic constraints of the words used in it. If sentences do not count semantics in the syntax, the no grammarian can explain why the sentences like ‘Colorless green ideas sleep furiously’ are not well-formed.

When we reverse the order of the sentence, it becomes ‘Ideas Green furiously colorless sleep’. This one is neither grammatically nor semantically acceptable. So we can conclude that if sentence means to convey some kind of meaning and contains common sense that people could understand, it has to be grammatically and semantically correct. Although the sentence ‘colorless green ideas sleep furiously’ is grammatically correct, it does not convey any understandable meaning that it is semantically unacceptable. This further shows that syntax and semantics could not be separated in sentence formation. 

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_furiously

《认知语言学》胡壮麟著 北京大学出版社 2006.

《语言学白问和硕博指南》侯国金著 四川大学出版社 2009.

英语教学理论与实践4班       刘博       2011178

1.POC(part of speech)和SPO(主谓宾)的匹配  

 

Responses:

1. The parts of speech which can be used as subjects in English sentences are as follows:

 a. noun

e.g. Love grows out of natural friendship.

The old need a great deal of attention.

The dying are groaning.

b. pronoun

e.g. I love all of her.

c.  number word

e.g. Six times five equals thirty.

D. gerund

e.g. Coming here is like entering a fairyland.

E. infinitive

e.g. To have good friends is like a treasure.

 

2. The parts of speech which can be used as predicates in English sentences are as follows:

      a. transitive verb

b. intransitive verb

c. be verb

 

3. The parts of speech which can be used as objects in English sentences are as follows:

 a. noun

e.g. Trust the students

The new will replace the old.

b. pronoun

Don’t have anything more to do with him.

c.  number word

I need ten.

D. gerund

You will find the pain easing up in a few hours.

E. infinitive

She finds it difficult to communicate with foreigners in English.

They are planning to see the sights of CQ tomorrow.

 

There is a diagram below (Y= Yes; N= No)

 

	名词	代词	形容词	副词	介词 （短语）	不定式 to do	动名 词	分词（现在，过去）	句子
主语	Y	Y	Y(须加the)	N	N	Y	Y	Y(须加the)	Y （主从）
谓语	N	N	N	N	N	N	N	N	N
宾语	Y	Y	Y (须加the)	N	N	Y	Y	Y(须加the)	Y (宾从)
表语	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	N	Y(表从)
同位语	Y	Y	Y(须加the)	N	N(极少)	Y	Y	Y(须加the)	Y(同从)
补语	Y	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	N	Y	N
定语	Y	N	Y(短语须后置)	N	Y（后置）	Y（后置）	Y	Y（短语须后置）	Y(定从)
状语	N	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	N	Y	Y(状从)

 

 

 

英语教学理论与实践4班        彭舟玲      2011187 

 

对Chomsky的这句话"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously"进行诊断。

    

这个句子从语法结构上分析是合乎组合规则的，但还是让人迷惑、看不懂。 Chomsky 创造出这句话，意在说明有的表面语法正确的语句在逻辑和现实意义上会很荒谬。因为“green”作为一种颜色和动词“sleep”是不搭界的， 而Colorless和 green也是冲突的，sleep 和furiously也是相互矛盾的。所以想要表达确切意义不光是结构能够主宰的， 句子的成分意义也是理解的关键。

 

   对于一个合理、可接受的标准句子来说，它必须符合语法（grammar）、逻辑（logic）、文化（culture）、制度（institution）、常识（common sense）、意义（meaning）等。从 Chomsky 的生成语法来说，似乎这个句子合乎语法，是正确的。但是，学习者考虑到具体因素认真分析会发现，它是不正确的。上面这个句子句语法正确，但没有意义和逻辑。

 

   自20世纪50年生成语法理论创立以来，乔氏句法自治思想伴随其生成语法理论经历了语义缺席、解释语义、语义紧缩、模块论阐释、方法论自然主义阐释这样5个阶段。前三个阶段，重在从句法描写中句法关涉语义的程度的角度来阐述句法自治的内涵，或认为句法描写与语义完全不相关，或认为语义的解释决定于句法，或认为句法描写仅涉及全然由语言规则决定的结构语义。第四个阶段主要从模块论角度阐释句法自治的思想，认为句法自治立足于语言自治，是与语言模块性假设一体的核心假设。最后一个阶段则从方法论自然主义的角度来阐释句法自治假设对于整个语言研究的合理性和正确性。但无论哪个阶段，乔氏所坚持的基本观点仍然不变：句法是一个自立的形式系统，语言的形式不取决于语义或功能，句法研究要尽量从句法内部寻求解释。

 

   对于乔姆斯基的理论，生成语义学，认知语言学和功能语言学都对其进行了批评。其中生成语义学派认为在句法、音系、语义三个组成部分中，语义是出发点，句法以语义为基础，音系以句法为基础，而且语法还包括语用问题；语义具有生成能力，句子的句法特点取决于意义、句法与语义紧密相连。之所以不能说ideas sleep ，不是句法不允许，而是语义不允许，逻辑不允许。

 

参考文献：姜孟.句法自治： 争鸣与证据 ［J］ 外国语文 2009(6)

          姜望琪.Firth 的语篇语义学思想［J］外国语言文学（季刊）2008(1)

       

 

 

英语教学理论与实践4班       彭小红  2011181

                     “合作”词性浅析

   In grammar, a part of speech (also a word class, a lexical class, or a lexical category) is a linguistic category of words (or more precisely lexical items), which is generally defined by the syntactic or Morphological behaviour of the lexical item in question. [1]Traditionally, common linguistic categories include noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, preposition, conjunction and interjedction. Noun refers to any abstract or concrete entity.Verb refers to any action or state of being. Adjective refers to any qualifier of a noun. Adverb refers to any qualifier of an adjective, verb, or other adverb. Pronoun refers to any substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Preposition refers to any establisher of relation and syntactic context. Conjunction refers to any syntactic connector. Interjection refers to any emotional greeting (or "exclamation"). Here, I will try to analyse the part of speech of the Chinese word "he zuo"(合作) and how it matches with subject, predicate, object and complement et al. in sentences.

无论是在现代汉语书面语还是口语中，“合作”一词出现的频率都是非常高的。我们首先来看几个熟悉的例子，在《现代汉语词典》 中 [2] ，“合作社”指劳动人民根据互助合作的原则自愿建立起来的经济组织。如生产合作社、运输合作社、消费合作社、供销合作社和信用合作社等等。“合作化”指用合作社的组织形式把分散的个体劳动者和小私有者组织起来。再看下面这个句子，“为了这个共同的目标，大家要协力合作。”我们容易看出，这几个例子中，“合作社”是名词，“......大家要协力合作”中的“合作”是一个动词。咋一看，“合作化”也应该是一个名词吧，但在《现代汉语词典》中它被标注为动词。可见，“合作”一词的词性是比较复杂的。下面，我将结合相关资料试着做一具体分析。

 一、动词“合作”

在李忆民主编的《现代汉语常用词用法词典》[3]中  ，他指出，“合作”作为动词，可带宾语、补语， 可受程度副词的修饰，指互相配合做某事或共同完成某项任务。如：

我们和他们研究所合作几个科研项目。（带宾语“几个科研项目”）

你们可以好好地合作合作。（受程度副词“好好地”修饰）

他们俩刚完成一项重要的科研项目，又合作开了。（带补语“开了”）

他学问是有，就是太傲，看不起人，谁和他也合作不了。（带补语“不了”）

演员和乐队合作得非常好。（带补语“得非常好”）

他们的意见发生了根本分歧，无法再合作下去了。（带补语“下去了”）

你们两个单位合作过吗？（疑问句，带补语“过”）                          

从以上可见，动词“合作”多用于积极方面，作谓语。 [4]

二、名词“合作”

在徐玉敏主编的《当代汉语学习词典》[5]中，“合作”被视为名词，指为了共同目的所作的工作或共同完成的任务。如：

在拍电影的过程中，我们俩的合作是成功的。（“合作”作主语）

我们的合作是有意义的。（“合作”作主语）

我们和他们曾经有过一些合作。（“合作”作宾语）

两个单位建立了长期的合作关系。（“合作”作定语）

希望我们今后能进行长期的合作。（“合作”作宾语）

两国的睦邻友好合作关系在广阔的领域里顺利地发展着。（“合作”作定语）

我们的合作是卓有成效的。（“合作”作主语）

这支曲子系两位已故音乐家合作。（这里“合作”似乎可视为一专有名词，指两个人或两个人以上共同写作，作宾语）[6]

当时我们想同他进行短期合作，以解决物资困难。（“合作”作宾语）

三、“合作”其他词性探讨

在以上两部分内容中，我试着分析了一下作为动词和名词的“合作”在语句中的成分。动词“合作”在句中均作谓语；而名词“合作”在句中可作主语、宾语、定语和补语。那么，“合作”一词是否还有其他词性呢？在李忆民主编的《现代汉语常用词用法词典》[3]中，我找到下面这个句子：

这部外国留学生散文集是几位教师合作编成的。

在这句话中，编者明确指出“合作”一词是充当的状语，修饰动词“编成”。我们知道，修饰动词的状语，是为了说明动作的状态，程度等，用的是一个副词。这里，我们可以理解为“编成”是在“合作”的状态下完成的。因而，“合作”便是一个副词。因此本文开头部分提到的“合作化”[1]若像该词典中所指是动词的话，那这个“合作”也用视为副词。此外，我还注意到一些由“合作”构成的短语，如：

合作医疗（我国农村一种依靠集体经济力量运作的医疗制度。主要由集体筹集资金，实行全部或部分免费防治疾病。） [7]

合作牛（解放区变工互动的一种合作形式，即数户贫雇农集体买牛、集体喂养，以解决向地主富农雇牛难、耕作不及时等问题。） [8]

例：去年在临南县曾掀起了一个群众合伙购牛的运动，“合作牛”是解决耕牛困难的适当的方法。（《解放日报》1946年3月23日转引自韩明安《新语词大词典》，P186）[8]

合作教育学（指把教学和教育工作建立在师生合作基础上的一种主张。）

例：“合作教育学”认为教学过程中必须贯彻让学生“自主选择”的原则。（《光明日报》1988年3月16日转引自韩明安《新语词大词典》，P186）[8]

在像“合作社、合作医疗、合作牛以及合作教育”等名词短语中，“合作”是视为形容词修饰后面的中心词“社、医疗、牛和教育”等还是看作名词修饰这些中心语呢？我认为这似乎是需要进一步探讨的问题。

本文试着对“合作”一词词性及其与句子成分主谓宾等的匹配问题进行的初步的探讨。在作为动词时，“合作”均作谓语；在作为名词时，它可充当主语、宾语、定语和补语。此外，“合作”还可视为副词，充当状语。至于在由“合作”构成的名词短语中，它是作为名词还是形容词则需要进一步探讨。

References:

 [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Part_of_speech

 [2] 中国社会科学院研究所词典编辑室. 现代汉语词典 (第五版) [Z]. 北京：商务印书馆. 2005.

     [3] 李忆民. 现代汉语常用词用法词典[M]. 北京：北京语言学院出版社. 1995.

     [4]  冯志纯. 新编现代汉语多功能词典[M]. 北京：国际文化出版公司. 1991.

     [5] 徐玉敏. 当代汉语学习词典（初级版）[M].北京：北京语言大学出版社. 2005.

     [6] 唐斌. 新编汉语词典[M]. 吉林：延边大学出版社. 2006.

     [7] 中国语言文字系列辞书编委会. 中华现代汉语词典. 北京：中国大百科全书出版社. 2007.

     [8] 韩明安. 新语词大辞典[M]. 哈尔滨：黑龙江人民出版社. 1991.

 

 

 

 

英语教学理论与实践4班       刘文戎        2011186

1. POC(part of speech)和SPO(主谓宾)的匹配   

2.对Chomsky的这句话"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously"进行诊断。

2.The sentence "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is syntactically acceptable, though the meaning is not clear, and theassociations between these words are almost nonexistent.

  According to behaviorists’ associative chain theory, a sentence consists of a chain of associations between individual words in a sentence.Or we can say, each word in a sentence serves as a stimulus for the next word, and thus the entire sentence is produced left to right.

Chomsky argued against this theory.He used this sentence to suggest that associations between words could not possibly explain the existence of sentences. He claimed that there is something more to the structure of a sentence than the associations between adjacent words. For example, presenting the word backward, we get thesentence“Furiously sleep ideas green colorless”, butit is not a sentence at all.

 

References:

Chomsky, Noam.Syntactic Structures.

David W. Carroll.Psychology of Language.

 

 

 

 

英语教学理论与实践4班     秦曦    2011192

对Chomsky的这句话"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously"进行诊断

  If we attempt to comprehend this sentence, we can paraphrase it as" an idea that is new and without any unique features seems to be in a state of dormancy while full of raging activities. Because we can search the seemingly properest meaning of every word to compose a loath proper sentence that can express a certain meaning: green means new; colourless can be seen as no characteristic; sleep is equal to "be dormant"; furiously matches a lot of raging activities.

  However, since it is promoted by Noam Chomsky in Syntactic Structures as an example of a sentence that can be grammatically correct while semantically nonsensical, it gives a typical example to show his idea for the reason that no one express ideas or thoughts in this way which it contradicts itself for green is not colourless and the sleep is quite not furious. According to his Generative Grammar/Transformational Grammar Theory that a sentence is composed by a NP and a VP and his famous Tree Diagram, this sentence can be divided and described as the following :

                  

  From this diagram, we can get the conclusion that a sentence which fits the grammar rules may not be comprehensible for it perhaps doesn't express a proper meaning.

  However, since Chomsky wants to find a rule to perscibe people's usage of language, dese this example go into the contrary way to show he is self-contradictory? I guess not, for he doesn't cite this example only, instead, he cites one more example (ideas green furiously colourless sleep) to make a comparison that a sentence can either be syntactically incorrect or semantically incorrect. If we put these two sentences together with a syntactically and semantically correct sentence we will find out that there are numerous sentences, correct or nonsensical, without a rule to guide them; there are less numerous sentences, syntactically correct but semantically incorrect, with a certain rule to guide them; there are even less numerous sentences, syntactically and semantically correct, with Generative Grammar to guide them. 

  Later on, he has proved and summarized that the generative Grammar should consist of syntax, semantics and phoneme. On one hand, syntax can generate lots of syntactic description which has a deep structure and a surface structure; on the other hand, semantics determines the deep structure while the phoneme determines the surface structure. Thus, his Generative Grammar theory can explain how we create different while both syntactically and semantically correct sentences.  

Reference :

Chomsky, Noam ,1957. Syntactic Structures. The Hague/Paris: Mouton. pp. 15.

Chomsky ,Noam, Topics in the Theory of Generative Grammar, T.A. Sebeok,ed.Current, Trends in

              Linguistics,vol.3,Mouton, the Hague,1966, 3-12.

WIKIPEDIA The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_grammar

 

 

 

英语教学理论与实践4班      都佳     2011194

 

2. 对Chomsky的这句话"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously"进行诊断。

The sentence “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” is composed by Chomsky which is grammatically correct yet semantically unacceptable, since nobody has ever spoken an utterance like this before. The ridiculousness and illogicality of this sentence will be exposed completely under scrutiny.

The subject of this sentence is “ideas” which is an abstract inanimate word. There are two adjectives preceding the main noun, “colorless” and “green”. First, “ideas” are abstract concept that cannot be perceived or directly seen by people. People are not able to know its color, let alone “ideas” do not have color at all. Thus, these two adjectives are not suitable to modify a noun such as “ideas” which totally have no relevant qualities. Then, even if it is assumed that these two modifiers are appropriate, things between them are also beyond our convention, for they themselves are two contradictory concepts. As “green” is a kind of color, how can it emerge in a sentence along with a word “colorless” which refers to objects without vividness? Next, the latter verb phrase will be examined. In the VP, the main verb is “sleep”, which refers to an action in a state of dormancy or inactivity, or in a state of unconsciousness. But it is modified by an adverb “furiously” that is usually used to qualify some wild or violent verbs. In this sense, to sleep furiously may seem to be a puzzling illogical turn of phrase. If examined more closely, we can find that such an absurd action is conducted by “ideas” which are inanimate and without the ability of taking any kind of actions. This is another level of irrationality.

All in all, although the sentence is grammatically correct, no understandable meaning can be derived from it. The associations among all the words within this sentence are almost nonexistent. Even Chomsky cannot explain this unbalance between semantics and syntax merely based on his theory of transformational generative grammar. Thus a distinction between syntax and semantics should enjoy enough attention from us.

Reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_furiously

 

 

 

英语教学理论与实践4班        郭红      2011193

    "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously". This sentence is made by Noam Chomsky. At the first sight, people would think this sentence is grammatically right but semantically contradictory. Chomsky made this sentence to propose his idea that we need more structured models to enrich English grammar and make sure our utterences are both grammatically and semantically correct.

From this sentence, we can see that Chomsky thinks grammaticalness does not equal to meaningfulness and he insists the autonomy of syntax.

In A synopsis of linguistic theory, 1930-1955, Firth used a sentence which has a  similar meaning with Chomsky's, "She slowly rushed upstairs to the cellar and turned the kettle out to boil two fires".

    However i think that this sentence can be kind of meaningful if we interpret it as using a metaphor and personification.

 

Chomsky published Syntactic Structures in 1957，which marked the birth of Transformational Grammar and the start of the period of classical theory.

1. 在该理论阶段，乔姆斯基强调对语法的研究，认为“最好把语法表述为独立于语义、自我包含的研究，尤其是不能把‘合乎语法’（grammaticalness）这一概念等同于‘有意义’（meaningfulness）” 。他还强调句法研究要独立于语义，这也就是所谓的“句法自立”或“句法自治”（autonomy of syntax）.

2. 乔姆斯基对这个例子的看法说明他坚持句法研究要独立于语义，句法研究可以不考虑语义，这恰恰是经典理论阶段生成语法语义观的体现。

3. 1957 年发表的“1930 至1955 年间语言学理论纲要”里，Firth 还用了She slowly rushed upstairs to the cellar and turned the kettle out to boil two fires 这样的例子，提到了Lewis Carroll 的无意义诗，以说明什么是他所谓的“语法意义”。

--------Firth,J.R A synopsis of linguistic theory,1930-1955

 

 

 

英语教学理论与实践4班     彭军花        2011179

1.      The Collocation of Parts of Speech in the Sentence

In traditional grammar, part of speech refers to the categories into which words are classified according to their function in sentences. However, in contemporary linguistics, this term has generally discarded in favor of the label word class.

English words traditionally are classified into eight parts of speech, including noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction and interjection. Concerned to the collocation of parts of speech in a sentence, it means their functions in a sentence or what roles they play in a sentence. According to their definitions, it is easy for us to know that their functions in a sentence or what roles they play in a sentence.

A noun is the name of a person, place, thing, idea or quality, for example, Alice, China, book, happiness and freedom. It is always used as the subject and object. Alice lives in China. A pronoun is a substitute for a noun. Take the following sentence as the example. Alice is Chinese, she is beautiful. The pronoun could be classified into six kinds: personal, interrogative, relative, demonstrative, indefinite and intensive. They also could be subject or object. For instance, This book is mine, You are my friend. Who are you? The adjective describes or limits a noun. Most of adjectives can never be used alone. It could only be the object. My cat is lovely. I have a lovely cat.

A verb is the expression of an action or a condition. The verb is usually used as a predicate. It collocates with the subject. It is often determined by the subject. Verbs should be consistent with subjects. I love my cat. She loves her dog. An adverb describes a verb, adjective, even other adverbs. The use of adverbs is similar to adjectives. They could not be used alone, too. Instead of the subject, predicate or object, they are complement. They tell how, when, where, how much or why. Take some examples. Alice runs quickly. I love my cat very much. He always chews his gun loudly. A preposition links the relationship between a noun or pronoun and another part of a sentence. A conjunction connects words, phrases and clauses. In English, there are many prepositions and conjunctions. They are often applied with other parts of speech. We went to school on Friday. They went to school by feet. I love my cat and she loves her dog. I love my cat but I hate her dog. They could never be subjects, predicates and objects. An interjection is a word that expresses feeling or emotion. It is followed by an exclamation mark. Wow! Ouch! Boo! They could be a whole sentence, or sometimes inserted into a sentence. Well, I don’t know.

All in all, a correct sentence should include two aspects: the correct structure of sentence and the rightly semantic use. With the development of language, the use of parts of speech is changing gradually. The collocation of parts of speech is waiting for the further research.

 

英语教学理论与实践4班      何静     2011189

Q:对Chomsky的这句话“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”进行诊断。

“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” is a sentence composed by Noam Chomsky in his 1957 Syntactic Structures as an example of a sentence that is grammatically correct (logical form) but semantically nonsensical. The term was originally used in his 1955 thesis “Logical Structures of Linguistic Theory”. Although the sentence is grammatically correct, no understandable meaning can be derived from it, and thus it demonstrates the distinction between syntax and semantics. As an example of a category mistake, it was used to show inadequacy of the then-popular probabilistic models of grammar, and the need for more structured models.

——From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”. Let’s begin to disassemble and analyze this sentence.

 

When we began to learn English at middle school, our teacher always said that the sentence you constructed must be ruled by a right grammar. Along With this rule, when we became high school students, the English teacher also told us that the part of speech must match the subject, predicate and object of our sentence, which means that we have to match our verbs and nouns in number and tense when using verbs and we have to remember that adjectives qualify nouns while adverbs qualify verbs and adjectives, like this. For instance, “the cutely boy does his homework last night serious” is not an acceptable sentence. The correct sentence should be “the cute boy did his homework last night seriously”. In the correct sentence, “cute” (adjective) qualifies “boy” (noun) and “seriously” (adverb) qualifies “did” (verb); what’s more, according to the time “last night”, we use the verb “did” (the past tense of “do”). Then, let’s see “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”. “Colorless” and “green” (adjective) qualifies “ideas” (noun); “furiously” (adverb) qualifies “sleep” (verb) and according to “ideas” (the plural form), the sentence uses “sleep” (the base form of a verb). This sentence is perfectly grammatical but saying nothing. Chomsky uses it to illustrate that syntactically but not semantically correct sentences are possible and syntactic structures can be separated from semantic concept and be independent.

 

However, in daily life, like the sentence “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” will never occur in an English discourse because it is meaningless and will not make sense. Firstly, “colorless green” is contradictory. “Colorless green” will be nonsense, now that “green” is one kind of color. Secondly, “ideas sleep” and “sleep furiously” go against common sense and general knowledge. The action “sleep” usually refers to human beings and life. And the adjectives to qualify and modify “sleep” are usually like quietly and peacefully. So, though this sentence is perfectly grammatical, hearers will not understand it if the sentence occurs in daily life.

 

Interesting supplement:

This kind of perfectly grammatical but meaningless example had occurred in the English translation of Chinese dishes. In China, there are some folk translations for the dishes as follows:

“驴打滚” : “Rolling Donkey”;

“夫妻肺片” : “Husband and Wife's Lung Slice”;

“麻婆豆腐” : “Beancurd Made by a Pock-marked Woman”;

 “红烧狮子头”: “Red Burned Lion Head”;

When the foreign friends read these names, I think they won’t have appetite to eat anymore. Instead, they will be scared by those names. Actually, those dishes translations are grammatical; however, they cannot make sense to foreigners. Nowadays, we have new translations for those dishes to make them meaningful:

“驴打滚” : “Glutinous Rice Rolls with Sweet Bean Flour”;

“夫妻肺片” : “Pork Lungs in Chili Sauce ”;

“麻婆豆腐” : “Mapo Tofu” (Stir-Fried Tofu in Hot Sauce);

“红烧狮子头”: “Stewed Pork Ball in Brown Sauce”;

——Name Resource from: http://forum.enorth.com.cn/thread_1720808_.html

To perfectly translate dishes name is a difficult task, there are still many people making great efforts on it.

Reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_furiously

http://forum.enorth.com.cn/thread_1720808_.html

 

英语教学理论与实践4班       梁英杰      2011195

The Diagnosis of a Sentence

                         —Colorless green ideas sleep furiously

 

    At first sight, we may have an intuitive feeling that there is nothing wrong with the sentence. But when we examine it in detail, we may find it is somewhat incomprehensible. This processing difficulty is not caused by its syntactic structure, but attributes to its expression of meaning. After a meticulous analysis of this sentence, I concluded that the sentence is grammatically or syntactically correct; however, it is semantically unacceptable or incomprehensible.

Let’s parse it from the perspective of syntax. Obviously, this sentence is a simple sentence, with only one subject and one predicate, and it belongs to the type of “S+V” in the English language which has totally five types of simple sentences, including “S+V”,“S+V+O”,“S+V+P”,“S+V+O_i+O_d”,“S+V+O+C”. Here, the “colorless green ideas” is the subject, and “sleep” is the predicate verb, with “furiously” as the adverbial. If we use phrase structure rule to analyze it, the whole sentence can be written as:

S (IP) =NP (Colorless green ideas) +VP (sleep furiously)

 

 

det.   N              V    adv.

 

 

Colorless  green  ideas   sleep    furiously

 

So, it can be seen that from the perspective of grammaticality, this sentence is correct.

However, when analyzed from the angle of meaning, that is, semantically the seemingly correct sentence is somewhat ridiculous and unacceptable. First, let’s examine the relationship between the subject “ideas” and the predicate verb “sleep”. Ideas are something derived from people’s mind. An idea can be a plan, a kind of impression or thought, an opinion, a feeling or an aim. So it can be inducted that ideas do not have the characteristic of life. When we say people who are quick in mind and have a lot of ideas, we mean they have an active brain, rather than that their ideas are active or dynamic. To some extent, ideas are static and lifeless. Yet the action of “sleep” must be done by a being, a living creature having life. Then how can lifeless ideas carry out the action of “sleep” which can only be done by living things? So it is inappropriate to match “ideas” with “sleep”, because “ideas” are not able to “sleep”. Conventionally, the noun of “idea” usually occurs in phrases or a sentences functioning as the object, such as “come up with an idea”, “put ideas into somebody’s head”, “I have no ideas” and etc.

Then, let’s take a close what does wrong within the NP “colorless green ideas”. In this noun phrase, “ideas” is the head, with “colorless” and ‘green” functioning as two parallel specifiers or modifiers, and there is no complement. Think that how can ideas be colorless and green at the same time if green represents a kind of color. It may be argued that “green” here may not be a kind of color, but means “new and inexperienced”. Such a new explanation sounds creative, yet it ignores the fact that people usually use “green” to describe people who are lacking in experience. Hence, to use “colorless” and ‘green” to modify “ideas” is not agreed.

Besides, it is also improper to use the adverbial “furiously” to describe the action of “sleep”. When people sleep, they rest with the eyes closed, and the body and mind remain inactive. People say “to sleep well /deeply/soundly/badly”, rarely do they say “to sleep” furiously. How can an agent fall into sleep, if he is furious?  Even when an agent is sleeping, he cannot be in a furious mood. So semantically and pragmatically, this match of “sleep” with “furiously” is beyond people’s common sense, so is the match of the subject “ideas” with the adverbial “furiously.”

Therefore, for a sentence, there are syntactic and semantic conditions that the words must meet. A grammatically correct sentence does not necessarily mean that the sentence is semantically or pragmatically acceptable.