The Source of Meaning

I love what Andrew Carnie says about approaching language from a scientific versus an artistic perspective:

"The two approaches to language study are both valid' they complement each other; and neither takes away from the other."

This being said, he launches into an approachable and illuminating review of the science of language. Carnie describes the case for language as an instinct, the rules (and distributional criteria) used to determine parts of speech, and the concept (hypothesis!) of constituents that can be applied to phrase structure rules to generate sentences. The science of syntax is incredibly useful when approached from the highly technical perspective that Carnie presents; understanding how to create sentence trees can clarify ambiguous sentences, and being able to identify parts of speech independent of meaning make it possible to analyze languages with a different parameters (ordering of subject, verb, object) than English, like Turkish or Irish.

But I'm curious about the meaning that we do give sentences, even when we analyze or create them in a strictly technical context. I remember learning in SYMSYS 100 about an sentence that Noam Chomsky generated in his 1957 book Syntactic Structures.  He used the sentence

"Colourless green ideas sleep furiously"

as an example of a syntactically correct sentence generated from phrase structure rules that semantically makes no sense. The point shown here is that phrase structure rules operate independently of meaning, just as parts of speech are necessarily determined using features other than semantics (like morphology and syntax).

But is it fair to say that this sentence has no meaning? Maybe on a technical level the sentence is nonsensical and violates some inherent rules that English-speakers use to assess the semantic validity of a sentence. But what about the other element of language analysis that Carnie mentioned? What about literature, language as art?

Here's one way to make meaning of the meaningless. Maybe "colourless green ideas" refers to unborn ideas, those still young ("green") and not yet voiced or considered outside of the idea-owner's mind. Lightweight, liquid, "colourless" like water. And in their dormant, unspoken state they seem to remain adamantly, refusing to transition from inactivity to life ("sleep furiously").

Here's my attempt to put the sentence in a context that makes its meaning clear:

a quiet
mouth sealed shut,
words swallowed one
tastable syllable
at a time.

a blaring
mind bustling, chaotic with
sound, where
colourless green ideas sleep
furiously
and refuse
to be awakened.

a silence.
the ideas remain
clear as water and
slumber on.


This raises an important question. What is the origin of meaning? If syntactic correctness does not guarantee that a sentence will "make sense," what will? Can we outline semantics in scientific terms that account for literary interpretations that may vary from person to person?

The role of literary analysis is an important one, even in the science of language. Without remembering that language is art, we can forget the ability of human minds to draw meaning from words that technically should not contain any at all.