# language, grammar

**URL:** <http://discourse.iapct.org/t/language-grammar/14125>\
**Category:** CSG1992\
**Created:** [May 3, 1992, 2:05am UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/language-grammar/14125 "1992-05-03T02:05:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Avery\_Andrews3](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Avery\_Andrews3](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/Avery_Andrews3)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 1992, 2:05am UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/language-grammar/14125/1 "1992-05-03T02:05:41Z")

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[Avery Andrews 920502.1856]  
(Bruce Nevin 920501.1045)

> Are you dispensing with the distinction between ungrammatical but  
> meaningful utterances like these and the (purportedly) meaningless but  
> grammatical "colorless green ideas sleep furiously."

No. I'm suggesting that normal grammatical processing is different from  
the process whereby people might understand syntactically distorted  
language (before they got used to it, and changed their grammar to suit).  
I'd assume that unconscious correction of the input is a a consequence  
of controlling for `perceive a well-formed sentence-structure', which  
can to some extent be achieved by overriding/overrwriting the input  
(keeping in mind that the input is frequently unstressed, garbled, etc.,  
so this over-ride/write facility is perhaps very useful even when the  
input is well-formed, as far as it goes.)

Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au  
(currently andrews@csli.stanford.edu)