Nonsense

Nonsense (pronounced /ˈnɒnsəns/ (UK), /ˈnɒnsɛns/ (US)) is a verbal communication or written text that is spoken or written in a human language or other symbolic system but lacks any coherent meaning. Many poets, novelists and songwriters have used nonsense in their works, often creating entire works using it. It is also an important field of study in cryptography.

Contents 1 Literary nonsense 1.1 Nonsense verse 1.1.1 Examples 2 Cryptography 3 Teaching machines to talk nonsense 4 Technical meaning in Wittgenstein

 Literary nonsense

The phrase "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" was coined by Noam Chomsky as an example of nonsense. The individual words make sense and are arranged according to proper grammatical rules, yet the result is nonsense. The inspiration for this attempt at creating verbal nonsense came from the idea of contradiction (for a start, how can a green idea be colorless?) and seemingly irrelevant and/or incompatible characteristics, which conspire to make the phrase meaningless. The phrase "the square root of Tuesday" operates on the latter principle. This principle is behind the inscrutability of the kōan "What is the sound of one hand clapping?", where one hand would presumably be insufficient for clapping without the intervention of another.

James Joyce’s final novel Finnegans Wake uses nonsense in a similar way: full of portmanteau words, it appears to be pregnant with multiple layers of meaning, but in many passages it is difficult to say whether any one person’s interpretation of a text could be the intended or correct one.

 Nonsense verse

Jabberwocky, a poem (of nonsense verse) found in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll (1871), is a nonsense poem written in the English language. The word jabberwocky is also occasionally used as a synonym of nonsense.Nonsense verse is the verse form of literary nonsense, a genre that can manifest in many other ways. Its best-known exponent is Edward Lear, author of The Owl and the Pussycat and hundreds of limericks.
Nonsense verse is part of a long line of tradition predating Lear: the nursery rhyme Hey Diddle Diddle could also be termed a nonsense verse. There are also some works which appear to be nonsense verse, but actually are not, such as the popular 1940s song Mairzy Doats.
Lewis Carroll, seeking a nonsense riddle, once posed the question How is a raven like a writing desk?. Someone answered him, Because Poe wrote on both. However, there are other possible answers (e.g. both have inky quills).
Lines of nonsense frequently figure in the refrains of folksongs, where nonsense riddles and knock-knock jokes are often encountered.

 Examples

The first verse of Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll;

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

The first four lines of On the Ning Nang Nong by Spike Milligan;
On the Ning Nang Nong

Where the cows go Bong!
and the monkeys all say BOO!
There's a Nong Nang Ning

The first verse of Spirk Troll-Derisive by James Whitcomb Riley;
The Crankadox leaned o'er the edge of the moon,

And wistfully gazed on the sea
Where the Gryxabodill madly whistled a tune
To the air of "Ti-fol-de-ding-dee."

The first four lines of The Mayor of Scuttleton by Mary Mapes Dodge;

The Mayor of Scuttleton burned his nose
Trying to warm his copper toes;
He lost his money and spoiled his will
By signing his name with an icicle quill;

The first four lines of Oh Freddled Gruntbuggly by Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz; a creation of Douglas Adams

Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee.
Groop I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes

Cryptography

The problem of distinguishing sense from nonsense is important in cryptography and other intelligence fields. For example, they need to distinguish signal from noise. Cryptanalysts have devised algorithms for this purpose, to determine whether a given text is in fact nonsense or not. These algorithms typically analyze the presence of repetitions and redundancy in a text; in meaningful texts, certain frequently used words — for example, the, is and and in a text in the English language — will recur. A random scattering of letters, punctuation marks and spaces will not exhibit these regularities. Zipf's law attempts to state this analysis in the language of mathematics. By contrast, cryptographers typically seek to make their cipher texts resemble random distributions, to avoid telltale repetitions and patterns which may give an opening for cryptanalysis.
It is harder for cryptographers to deal with the presence or absence of meaning in a text in which the level of redundancy and repetition is higher than found in natural languages (for example, in the mysterious text of the Voynich manuscript).

 Teaching machines to talk nonsense

Scientists have attempted to teach machines to produce nonsense. The Markov chain technique is one method which has been used to generate texts by algorithm and randomizing techniques that seem meaningful. Another method is sometimes called the Mad Libs method: it involves the creation of templates for various sentence structures, and filling in the blanks with noun phrases or verb phrases; these phrase-generation procedures can be looped to add recursion, giving the output the appearance of greater complexity and sophistication. Racter was a computer program which generated nonsense texts by this method; however, Racter’s book, The Policeman’s Beard is Half Constructed, proved to have been the product of heavy human editing of the program's output.

 Technical meaning in Wittgenstein

In Ludwig Wittgenstein's writings, the word "nonsense" carries a special technical meaning which differs significantly from the normal use of the word. In this sense, "nonsense" does not refer to meaningless gibberish, but rather to the lack of sense in the context of sense and reference. In this context, logical tautologies, and purely mathematical propositions may be regarded as "nonsense". For example, "1+1=2" is a nonsensical proposition.
It is important to note that here "nonsense" does not necessarily carry negative connotations. Indeed, Wittgenstein wrote in Tractatus Logico Philosophicus that some of the propositions contained in his own book should be regarded as nonsense.


From Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia

Numb

U2

Don't move
Don't talk out-a time,
Don't think
Don't worry, everything's just fine
Just fine.
Don't grab
Don't clutch
Don't hope for too much
Don't breathe
Don't achieve
Don't grieve without leave.
Don't check, just balance on the fence
Don't answer
Don't ask
Don't try and make sense.
Don't whisper
Don't talk
Don't run if you can walk,
Don't cheat, compete
Don't miss the one beat.
Don't travel by train
Don't eat
Don't spill
Don't piss in the drain
Don't make a will.
Don't fill out any forms
Don't compensate
Don't cover
Don't crawl
Don't come around late
Don't hover at the gate

Don't take it on board
Don't fall on your sword
Just play another chord
If you feel you're getting bored
Don't change your brand
Don't listen to the band
Don't gape
Don't ape
Don't change your shape
Have another grape
Don't plead
Don't bridle
Don't shackle
Don't grind
Don't curve
Don't swerve
Don't lie, die, serve
Don't theorise, realise, polarise
Chance, dance, dismiss, apologise
Don't spy
Don't lie
Don't try
Imply
Detain
Explain
Start again
Don't triumph
Don't coax
Don't cling
Don't hoax
Don't freak
Peak
Don't leak
Don't speak
Don't project
Don't connect
Protect
Don't expect
Suggest
Don't project
Don't connect
Protect
Don't expect
Suggest
Don't struggle
Don't jerk
Don't collar
Don't work
Don't wish
Don't fish
Don't teach
Don't reach
Don't borrow
Don't break
Don't fence
Don't steal
Don't pass
Don't press
Don't try
Don't feel
Don't touch
Don't dive
Don't suffer
Don't rhyme
Don't fantasise
Don't rise
Don't lie
Don't project
Don't connect
Protect
Don't expect
Suggest
Don't project
Don't connect
Protect
Don't expect
Suggest

(BONO AND LARRY MULLEN JR. - backing vocal)
I feel numb
I feel numb
Too much is not enough
Gimme some more
Gimme some more
Of that stuff love
Too much is not enough
Too much is not enough
I feel numb
I feel numb
Gimme what you got
Gimme what I don't get
Gimme what you got
Too much is not enough
I feel numb
I feel numb
Gimme some more
Gimme some more
Of that stuff love
Gimme some more
Too much is not enough
I feel numb
I feel numb
I feel numb
I feel numb
I feel numb
I feel numb
I feel numb
I feel numb
I feel numb
I feel numb
I feel numb


The Edge - Numb