People who do philosophy of language worry about the fact that it is possible to construct a sentence that follows all the grammatical rules and yet makes no sense. Consider, for example,
In linguistics this sort of stuff is sometimes trotted out in relation to what is called the deep grammar debate, that is the debate about whether there is some deep grammar embedded in our brains that makes all languages possible*. But what about right-on-the-surface grammar? The odd thing about sentences like the above is that you see them and you go looking for a way it could make sense. Right-on-the-surface grammar tells us that this is a sentence and we assume that the failure to see what it means lies with us and not the sentence. And it pretty much has to make some kind of sense; as Wittgenstein noted, even nonsense has to make a certain kind of sense.
I've abused John Lennon in the past, largely because he deserves abuse, but one thing he was really good at, perhaps the only thing he was really good at, was nonsense.
When I was a little boy and my older cousins would play that song I imagined that Semolina Pilchard was a girl. I wanted to know her. She seemed like the heroine of a child's story. But there is no reason at all to assume Semolina is a girl except that "Semolina" felt like a girl's name to me because I didn't know what the word meant. It's a kind of flour, in case you don't know.
Of course, if you were listening to someone read this text, you might well hear "It's a kind of flower," instead and think, "That's why he thought Semolina was a girl".
There is an old anecdote that racists used to tell about a young woman who wanted to name her child a beautiful word she had heard during labour. The beautiful word? "Placenta". But you can see her point can't you?"Chlamydia" would also make a beautiful name for a girl if it didn't mean what it means. I get it entirely, "Placenta" is a beautiful word and if you don't know the thing that it means, the associations you get from hearing it are beautiful. Far from proving something racists wanted to believe about black people, the anecdote only seemed to make sense to the people who told the story because were already racists to begin with.
"Semolina" felt like a girl's name to me because it felt soft and pretty but "semolina" is actually from durum wheat. "Durum" from the same root as "durable" meaning "hard"!
"Pilchard", by the way, was the last name of a police officer who arrested a number of rock musicians on drug charges back in the 1960s. That may be where Lennon got it, in which case he was thinking of a man. When I was 20, a boy named Matthew Pritchard, which sounds almost like "Pilchard", stuck an automatic pistol in my face and robbed me. All he got for his trouble was a canvas bag with a Frank Sinatra pin on the outside and several books by Karl Marx inside. I eventually got everything back except the pin and I've always missed that pin. It wouldn't have bothered me at all to have lost the bag or the books.
Later, when I went to court intending to give the testimony that would send Matthew Pritchard to jail, I found myself singing "The Walrus" and wondered how the song got in my head. When I got to court, I learned that although Pritchard had robbed a number of people the same night he'd robbed me, I was the only one who wasn't too scared to testify. The police officer who met me at the court told me that right before the case was to begin. It hadn't occurred to me to be frightened until then. As it happened, I didn't have to because as soon as Matthew Pritchard's lawyer told him that I had, in fact, showed up, he changed his plea to guilty.
Years later, I saw Pritchard again in a bar and I told him who I was largely to prove to myself that I really wasn't scared, that I would have passed the test if I had had to. But when I told him who I was and how I knew him he started to shake. In his world people tell you stuff like that just before they hurt you really bad. He was tiny little guy without a gun. That hadn't been my intention and I was shocked to see his reaction. He was really, really scared.
It never occurred to me he might be scared because it never occurred to me to wonder what it would feel like to be him. It did occur to him what it would feel like to be me when he pushed the gun in my face. I know that because he talked a lot when he robbed me and everything he said was about how scared I should be.
The other thing that never occurred to me was how it was that I was absolutely certain it was him. I'd only seen him twice before in my life and that several years previous. And yet I recognized his face instantly. I'd walked over and said, "are you Matthew Pritchard?" but I'd never doubted for a second that he was.
Thinking about it afterwards, I laughed because I remembered singing "The Walrus" that morning and I realized that the song had popped into my head because "Pritchard" rhymes with "Pilchard".
Now consider this sentence from one of the Psalms** in this morning's Divine Office:
Yeah, we're odd that way. The rest of the world wakes up Friday morning and thinks, "Yay, Friday!" while we Catholics mourn Christ's death and our sin.
Here is a last sentence for your consideration:
It was written by a woman who breeds Clumber Spaniels. Clumbers are mostly white with markings that can be dark or light. The darker markings are called "orange" and the lighter ones are called "lemon" and she is saying that most of the dogs they have bred have had lighter markings. Now you know. But even before you knew, that sentence seemed to have meaning didn't it.
Sort of like the way the world can be full of God's wisdom because he created it even though we can't understand that wisdom. Some people will read that and hate it and maybe even hate me.
* My best guess, for what it is worth, is "probably not".
** Psalm 38
The cat flew the window.I've used that example before. It's not original. A professor of mine used it during a graduate seminar in linguistics.
In linguistics this sort of stuff is sometimes trotted out in relation to what is called the deep grammar debate, that is the debate about whether there is some deep grammar embedded in our brains that makes all languages possible*. But what about right-on-the-surface grammar? The odd thing about sentences like the above is that you see them and you go looking for a way it could make sense. Right-on-the-surface grammar tells us that this is a sentence and we assume that the failure to see what it means lies with us and not the sentence. And it pretty much has to make some kind of sense; as Wittgenstein noted, even nonsense has to make a certain kind of sense.
I've abused John Lennon in the past, largely because he deserves abuse, but one thing he was really good at, perhaps the only thing he was really good at, was nonsense.
Semolina Pilchard, climbing up the Eiffel Tower.Those phrases from "The Walrus" have great mouth feel. And they also seem packed with meaning. You can argue that the whole point is that they don't have meaning and that Lennon was making fun of people who insist on finding meaning but that is a kind of deeper meaning of it's own isn't it? To trot out Wittgenstein again, we might say that it's the "deeper meaning" that is hidden right on the surface; you just have to look at it the right way.
Elementary penguin singing Hari Krishna.
Man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe.
When I was a little boy and my older cousins would play that song I imagined that Semolina Pilchard was a girl. I wanted to know her. She seemed like the heroine of a child's story. But there is no reason at all to assume Semolina is a girl except that "Semolina" felt like a girl's name to me because I didn't know what the word meant. It's a kind of flour, in case you don't know.
Of course, if you were listening to someone read this text, you might well hear "It's a kind of flower," instead and think, "That's why he thought Semolina was a girl".
There is an old anecdote that racists used to tell about a young woman who wanted to name her child a beautiful word she had heard during labour. The beautiful word? "Placenta". But you can see her point can't you?"Chlamydia" would also make a beautiful name for a girl if it didn't mean what it means. I get it entirely, "Placenta" is a beautiful word and if you don't know the thing that it means, the associations you get from hearing it are beautiful. Far from proving something racists wanted to believe about black people, the anecdote only seemed to make sense to the people who told the story because were already racists to begin with.
"Semolina" felt like a girl's name to me because it felt soft and pretty but "semolina" is actually from durum wheat. "Durum" from the same root as "durable" meaning "hard"!
"Pilchard", by the way, was the last name of a police officer who arrested a number of rock musicians on drug charges back in the 1960s. That may be where Lennon got it, in which case he was thinking of a man. When I was 20, a boy named Matthew Pritchard, which sounds almost like "Pilchard", stuck an automatic pistol in my face and robbed me. All he got for his trouble was a canvas bag with a Frank Sinatra pin on the outside and several books by Karl Marx inside. I eventually got everything back except the pin and I've always missed that pin. It wouldn't have bothered me at all to have lost the bag or the books.
Later, when I went to court intending to give the testimony that would send Matthew Pritchard to jail, I found myself singing "The Walrus" and wondered how the song got in my head. When I got to court, I learned that although Pritchard had robbed a number of people the same night he'd robbed me, I was the only one who wasn't too scared to testify. The police officer who met me at the court told me that right before the case was to begin. It hadn't occurred to me to be frightened until then. As it happened, I didn't have to because as soon as Matthew Pritchard's lawyer told him that I had, in fact, showed up, he changed his plea to guilty.
Years later, I saw Pritchard again in a bar and I told him who I was largely to prove to myself that I really wasn't scared, that I would have passed the test if I had had to. But when I told him who I was and how I knew him he started to shake. In his world people tell you stuff like that just before they hurt you really bad. He was tiny little guy without a gun. That hadn't been my intention and I was shocked to see his reaction. He was really, really scared.
It never occurred to me he might be scared because it never occurred to me to wonder what it would feel like to be him. It did occur to him what it would feel like to be me when he pushed the gun in my face. I know that because he talked a lot when he robbed me and everything he said was about how scared I should be.
The other thing that never occurred to me was how it was that I was absolutely certain it was him. I'd only seen him twice before in my life and that several years previous. And yet I recognized his face instantly. I'd walked over and said, "are you Matthew Pritchard?" but I'd never doubted for a second that he was.
Thinking about it afterwards, I laughed because I remembered singing "The Walrus" that morning and I realized that the song had popped into my head because "Pritchard" rhymes with "Pilchard".
Now consider this sentence from one of the Psalms** in this morning's Divine Office:
I go mourning all the day long.It's not just that if you heard it you might think "morning all the day long" and think of how that might makes sense. And it might make sense in a certain context—"all day breakfast" makes sense even though "breakfast" means a meal we eat in the morning. When you read the Psalm aloud, and it's always read aloud during the Office, you feel that other meaning at some level. Particularly as this is a morning prayer. And it's Friday morning which, for Catholics like me, is a special morning of mourning; mourning both for Christ, who died on a Friday, but also for me who dies by my sins.
Yeah, we're odd that way. The rest of the world wakes up Friday morning and thinks, "Yay, Friday!" while we Catholics mourn Christ's death and our sin.
Here is a last sentence for your consideration:
The vast majority of our dogs have been lemon.Sounds like a nonsense example someone made up just like "The cat flew the window" or "Elementary Penguin singing Hare Krishna" doesn't it? It isn't. It's meaningful sentence that made perfect sense to the readers for whom it was intended.
It was written by a woman who breeds Clumber Spaniels. Clumbers are mostly white with markings that can be dark or light. The darker markings are called "orange" and the lighter ones are called "lemon" and she is saying that most of the dogs they have bred have had lighter markings. Now you know. But even before you knew, that sentence seemed to have meaning didn't it.
Sort of like the way the world can be full of God's wisdom because he created it even though we can't understand that wisdom. Some people will read that and hate it and maybe even hate me.
* My best guess, for what it is worth, is "probably not".
** Psalm 38
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