Iâve always strongly felt that you can make a âBuffalo buffaloâŚâ sentence with any number of buffalos, and without resorting to the city of Buffalo at all (which I think is cheating).
Without resorting to the city of Buffalo, it becomes much more obvious that the sentence can go on for ever. At each iteration you simply take the object of the previous sentence and make it the subject of the next sentence, and say that those buffalo also bully.
So, first we substitute the word âcowsâ for the noun âbuffaloâ and the word âbullyâ for the verb âbuffalo,â and then we mark each equivalent noun and noun-phrase (to make the substitutions clear), and we get
- Bully! â the imperative
- Cows bully.
- Cows bully cows1
- [Cows that cows bully]1 bully â i.e. the cows that were being bullied in #3 themselves also bully
- [Cows that cows bully]1 bully cows2
- [Cows that [cows that cows bully]1 bully]2 bully â i.e. the cows that were being bullied in #5 themselves also bully
- [Cows that [cows that cows bully]1 bully]2 bully cows3
âŚetc.
The recursive nature becomes much more obvious. Each time a sentence ends with the verb (âbullyâ i.e. saying that some cows bully), we can ask âwell, who do they bully?â And each time we answer that by specifying that they bully cows, we can take those cows (the object of the previous sentence) and say that they themselves (now as the subject) also bully.
Once we realize that (1) any object in a valid sentence, e.g. âcatsâ in the sentence âdogs bite cats,â can be turned into a noun-phrase with an optional âthatâ, e.g. âcats (that) dog bite,â and that (2) any animate noun-phrase can be followed by a transitive verb, e.g. âcats dogs bite eat,â and finally that (3) transitive verb can take an object, e.g. âcats dogs bite eat mice,â we can then prove from those three axioms that we can continue the cycle indefinitely: âmice (that) cats dogs bite eat steal crumbs.â And then we donât need to confuse matters with the city of Buffalo.
So is
Cheddar cheddars cheddar Cheddar cheddars.
Or âPolice police police police policeâ
Except they never do⌠(Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? etc.)
Iâm not sure Iâm sold that âBuffalo!â is a grammatical English sentence. âBuffaloâ is transitive, and I donât know of a good argument that it has an implicit object. I wouldnât consider âWarn!â or âHave!â grammatical sentences (or âBully!â for that matter, though itâs a perfectly serviceable interjection especially when uttered from underneath circular specs and a walrus mustache).
Or, as my daughter calls them, âBanthas.â
badger badger badger badger badger badger
Ninja ninja ninja ninja ninja ninja.
You guys trolling Wikipedia for ideas now?
Surely almost all transitive verbs can also be used intransitively, in the imperative.
Kick!
Fire!
Confuse!
Ite! Ite! Ite!
âKickâ and âfireâ are both ambitransitiveâi.e., verbs that can function transitively or intransitively. And âConfuse!â seems as ungrammatical to me as âWarn!â and âHave!â
In fact you can also increase the number of "buffalo"s in the sentence without any additional recursionâwhich makes the sentence very hard to parseâif you invoke the idea of a âbuffalo buffaloââa buffalo that likes other buffalo, akin to a âpeople personâ. So replace the verb âbuffaloâ with some other verbââadmireâ, sayâand make it about âpeople peopleâ from the city of Buffalo. Then you get:
[The] Buffalo people people [that] Buffalo people people admire [in turn] admire Buffalo people people.
Putting back âbuffaloâ for âpeopleâ, and âbuffaloâ for âadmireâ, you get a sentence with eleven "buffalo"s and no additional level of recursion.
James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher.
Two students are writing, one uses âhadâ as a past tense verb instead of the teacher-preferred âhad had.â With punctuation, the sentence becomes slightly easier to parse.
James, while John had had âhad,â had had âhad had,â âhad hadâ had had a better effect on the teacher.
EDIT: Just wanted to say that on the new page style, sometimes, but not always, the âContinue the Discussionâ button is behind the âAbout Us / Contact / AdvertiseâŚâ bar. Iâm running Iceweasel 29.
I think the idea of the original sentence is itâs the longest grammatical phrase consisting of one word that specifically doesnât require recursion; allowing recursion makes for a lot more possible sentences but it somehow feels like cheating.
The Lion Eating Poet in the Stone Den ( http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den ) is a cute example of the same thing in Mandarin but it also feels like cheating as even though itâs composed entirely of the phoneme âshiâ, the fact that Mandarin is tonal means theyâre actually just vague homophones and not the same word at all, although I guess you could say the same about each âbuffaloâ. That said, itâs enough to convince me not to bother learning the languageâŚ
Buffalo is also a color in CSS: Hex=#765F57 / RGB=118,95,87.
So now itâs an adjective that can modify every appearance of the noun âbuffalo:â
So now, "Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo!
And I say bullshit. Without punctuation this (and similar constructions) are all but unintelligible to all but the most perspicacious grammarians.
Gorilla Gorilla Gorilla.
Sorry about thatâŚhowever I think this is relevant because the topic of this BB entry is a series of repeated words accompanied by a WikiP link.
Anyway - although an extreme exampleâŚthe Buffalo sentence when spoken can make more sense because of how spoken English uses intonation and emphasis as seen by how most people use âdudeâ and etcetera. English is unique among most Western languages in this regard.
Though one thing I especially like about that one (at least according to the Wikipedia translation, I understand no Mandarin myself) is that the last line, while still using the same phoneme, is a meta commentary on how difficult the story is to tell.
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