"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."
~Noam Chomsky (1928)
Is this a sentence, you ask? In Chomsky's framework, yes it is. Chomsky pointed out that a sentence can be syntactically correct but semantically meaningless. To translate this quote into your daily life, remember that if you're not careful in your choice of language, you can also produce semantically meaningless sentences that have consequences other than what you intended. I remembered this quote when I saw Picasso's drawing...pinches my brain strings - numbing, intoxicating - and yet I find it fascinating. Like a sweet, bad grip of hell...wait...that's sexy! ;)
Photo: The Dream and Lie of Franco - Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice
#personalnonsense #Picasso #Chomsky #pinchmybrainstrings
I can do semantically meaningless sentences.. not always intentionally though.
ReplyDeleteA related, earlier, and possibly even more subversive idea was the Dadaist concept of superimposing semantically unrelated images, and thereby getting observers to question how they saw relationships in the world.
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