LINGUISTICS
The Importance of Non-Literal Meaning in Language
A Very Brief Introduction to Linguistic Pragmatics
Grammar and meaning are distinct, though related aspects of language. Consider the following sentence:
Me Tarzan.
This sentence is ungrammatical in English. But we all know what it means. We would translate it into grammatical English as “I am Tarzan,” or perhaps “My name is Tarzan.”
There can also be grammatical sentences without meaning:
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. (Due to Noam Chomsky)
All the adjectives, nouns, verbs, and adverbs in this sentence are in the right place, and all are inflected and conjugated properly according to the rules of English grammar. Nonetheless, the sentence is meaningless, as ideas do not have color, and even if they did, they could not simultaneously be green and colorless. Ideas cannot sleep, and it is not entirely clear what it would mean to sleep furiously.
These two sentences illustrate a simple fact about language; we can divorce meaning from grammar. This is, perhaps, not surprising considering that meaning is more broadly associated with the concept of communication (the transfer of information).
