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ad-lapidem t1_j6o40pr wrote

Reply to comment by AceDecade in ELI5: Why does the order of adjectives matter? by AbleReporter565

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously, more famously.

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AceDecade t1_j6o4l68 wrote

What grammar rule does this sentence break? Isn't it grammatically correct, semantically nonsense?

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ad-lapidem t1_j6o4x00 wrote

It doesn't; that's the point I'm making. You can form a sentence which parses into grammatical English but which doesn't communicate any useful information. Grammar is not the only thing that determines whether something is good English or not.

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AceDecade t1_j6o519k wrote

I've never suggested otherwise. You claimed there were many grammar rules which produce grammatically correct sentences when broken. I'm asking which rules those are.

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ad-lapidem t1_j6ohiva wrote

Where do I claim this? I simply point out that "He will run yesterday" is grammatically correct even if it does not make sense. It follows all the rules of standard English grammar. You would presumably not object to the sentence "She will jog tomorrow" which is identical in grammatical structure and equally grammatically correct in standard English. But grammar, again, is not the sole determiner of what makes something acceptable English.

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AceDecade t1_j6oigxd wrote

Sorry, I was confusing you with the commenter above who made the claim I'm referencing. I was curious about grammar rules that, when you break the rule, you still end up with a grammatically correct sentence that means something different from what you may have intended.

I'm still not sure why you referenced "colorless green ideas sleep furiously". It's a grammatically correct, semantically meaningless sentence but it doesn't appear to break any grammar rules, which is what I was originally asking for.

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