Interaction of Syntax and Semantics
Syntax and meaning can interact, such that although a sentence is syntactically valid, and all of its words are meaningful, the sentence as a whole is meaningless. Examples of this type of sentence include:
- Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. (Noam Chomsky)
- The gostak distims the doshes. (Andrew Ingraham.)
Read more about this topic: List Of Linguistic Example Sentences
Famous quotes containing the words interaction of and/or interaction:
“Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Just because multiples can turn to each other for companionship, and at times for comfort, don’t be fooled into thinking you’re not still vital to them. Don’t let or make multiples be parents as well as siblings to each other. . . . Parent interaction with infants and young children has everything to do with how those children develop on every level, including how they develop their identities.”
—Pamela Patrick Novotny (20th century)