The Importance of Non-Literal Meaning in Language
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).
Language is a tool for communication — perhaps the best one we have at our disposal, as it allows us to convey complex ideas effortlessly. There are other communication systems of course.
Traffic lights, morse code, smoke signals, semaphore flags, body language, charades, and pantomime are all ways of conveying meaning, but none of these are as expressive as language. Imagine trying to convey a complex concept like “Had I been born in the 1950s, I would probably be a fan of rockabilly,” using semaphore flags or body language.
Language is a complex thing; to speak a language fluently/natively, one must command its vocabulary, grammar (rules about how to build phrases and sentences), sound system (the sounds of the language and admissible sound patterns), and of course, how meaning is encoded in the language.
Linguists study language scientifically and break such domains into different subfields of linguistics. The…
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