Adding this having read your post. I think I agree that it is impossible to speak of a sematically invalid statement, but that is because I am locating the meaning outside the statement, rather than applying validity or invalidity to the statement itself. ‘Colourless green ideas sleep furiously’ certainly means something to me, and not just as a first order sign about Chomsky. The example of this, par excellence, is Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky.There’s a great section in Goedel, Escher, Bach about translating the Jabberwocky into different languages—even though it is a nonsense poem, it clearly means something when you read it.
It is interesting to think about why a statement might be found more or less meaningful by people in general. I asked ChatGPT for a summary of Eco’s Theory of Semiotics, and it included this passage:
‘Eco emphasises that meaning is not inherent in signs but is produced through codes—systems of rules shared within a culture. Interpretation depends on the interpreter’s familiarity with the relevant codes.’
I think this is important. My post doesn’t engage with why there are common patterns in words. As I mention in my other comment, I see this as a cultural, emergent thing that I was treating as out-of-scope, concentrating instead on how individual communication works.
Jabberwocky is my favorite poem. People who know me well hear that and are completely unsurprised :-)
I am locating the meaning outside the statement, rather than applying validity or invalidity to the statement itself.
This is critical, I think. In daily life I make up words all the time, and the people around me with whom I share the necessary context and are also native English speakers have no trouble intuiting what they mean.
Adding this having read your post. I think I agree that it is impossible to speak of a sematically invalid statement, but that is because I am locating the meaning outside the statement, rather than applying validity or invalidity to the statement itself. ‘Colourless green ideas sleep furiously’ certainly means something to me, and not just as a first order sign about Chomsky. The example of this, par excellence, is Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky. There’s a great section in Goedel, Escher, Bach about translating the Jabberwocky into different languages—even though it is a nonsense poem, it clearly means something when you read it.
It is interesting to think about why a statement might be found more or less meaningful by people in general. I asked ChatGPT for a summary of Eco’s Theory of Semiotics, and it included this passage:
‘Eco emphasises that meaning is not inherent in signs but is produced through codes—systems of rules shared within a culture. Interpretation depends on the interpreter’s familiarity with the relevant codes.’
I think this is important. My post doesn’t engage with why there are common patterns in words. As I mention in my other comment, I see this as a cultural, emergent thing that I was treating as out-of-scope, concentrating instead on how individual communication works.
Jabberwocky is my favorite poem. People who know me well hear that and are completely unsurprised :-)
This is critical, I think. In daily life I make up words all the time, and the people around me with whom I share the necessary context and are also native English speakers have no trouble intuiting what they mean.