"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 obvious 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.
Read more about Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously: Details, Attempts At Meaningful Interpretations, Statistical Challenges, Related and Similar Examples
Famous quotes containing the words green, ideas and/or sleep:
“As the shade went up
And the ambulance came crashing through the dust
Of the new day, the moon and the sun and the stars,
And the iceberg slowly sank
In the volcano and the sea ran far away
Yellow over the hot sand, green as the green trees.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The uppermost idea with Hellenism is to see things as they really are; the uppermost ideas with Hebraism is conduct and obedience. Nothing can do away with this ineffaceable difference. The Greek quarrel with the body and its desires is, that they hinder right thinking; the Hebrew quarrel with them is, that they hinder right acting.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep a-nights.
Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)