probably the most famous sentence ever written by noam chomsky. he wrote it to show that an utterance can be linguistically, at least syntactically, valid, yet utterly meaningless. is it.
if i’ve parsed the phrase structure rules incorrectly let me know (for example:are Det1 and Det2 co-terminous? or is Det1 super-ordinate to Det2? - is it the ‘green-ness’ which is without colour or the ideas?)
In NP[ DP[ A[colourless] A[green] ]DPN[ideas] ]NP—what you have pictured—neither colourless nor green strictly modify the other, so I gather a conjunctive reading as in “colourless and green ideas” or “green and colourless ideas” (ordering does not matter in a conjunction).
That is an okay reading, but I’ve always parsed it with green ideas being modified, i.e. NP[ A[colourless] NP1[ A[green] N[ideas] ]NP1 ]NP. The difference here is that the green ideas are colourless.
Notes:
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tristn reblogged this from kened and added:
In NP[ DP[ A[colourless] A[green] ]DPN[ideas] ]NP—what...have pictured—neither colourless...
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kened posted this