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Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
- JadeNB 17y agoOne can't buffalo buffalo without thinking of the two old standbys: The horse raced past the barn fell. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence) John while James had had had had had had had had had more fun. (That one was from an old puzzle book I had—had had?—as a kid. I find it much like the Buffalo sentence, in that you puzzle over it for a while, are told the resolution, and then say “Huh. OK, if you say so.”) EDIT: While my mind's on random funny sentences, this one was an old favourite of my mother's (who taught me all the grammar I know) from Cheaper by the Dozen. It is the reaction of a child, whose bedroom is on the second floor, on being presented with an unacceptable evening's reading: “What did you bring that book you know I don't like to be read to out of up for?”
- dmpayton 17y ago...are told the resolution, and then say “Huh. OK, if you say so.” Adding punctuation helps: John, while James had had "had", had had "had had"; "had had" had had more fun.
- billswift 17y agoNot much, it still doesn't make any sense to read or hear. Just because something can be parsed does NOT make it good English. The whole purpose of language is to communicate - if it cannot be understood without parsing it is not correct. Of course, the examples are not supposed to communicate, but to be entertaining, which is a different function.
- JadeNB 17y ago> Not much, it still doesn't make any sense to read or hear. pvg points out below (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1097310 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1097310) that my source had a nonsensical ending; the actual ending makes a bit more sense.
- pvg 17y agoMore hads can be had there - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_while_John_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_a_better_effect_on_the_teacher http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_while_John_had_had_had_ha...
- JadeNB 17y agoThat's beautiful! It must be 20 years that I've been subconsciously bothered by that puzzle, because I couldn't understand what “more fun” was supposed to mean in that context. With ‘where’ in place of ‘while’ and “a better effect on the teacher” in place of “more fun”, it sudddenly makes sense. Also, the linked article links to “List of linguistic example sentences” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguistic_example_sentences http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguistic_example_sent...), which introduced me to a beautiful Mitch Hedberg quote: > I haven't slept for ten days, because that would be too long. and helped me remember a word that has been eluding me for some time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguistic_example_sentences#Syllepsis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguistic_example_sent.... Thanks!
- mreid 17y ago“This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.” -- Winston Churchill
- mustpax 17y agoMy favorite treatment of that Garden path sentence, is this Dinosaur Comics strip: http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=204 http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=204
- ghshephard 17y agoFrom the Wikipedia article, the following was the only one that let me make sense of this: ""Alley cats [whom] Junkyard dogs intimidate [also happen to] intimidate Sewer rats."" (Where the place "Buffalo is replaced by "Alley", "Junkyard", "Sewer" - and the act, to buffalo, is replaced with "intimidate", while the animals "buffalo" is replaced with cats, dogs, and rats. I'll admit it took me a few minutes to get the implicit "whom" and "also happen to".
- InclinedPlane 17y agoThat's a good breakdown. cats, dogs, rats = Buffalo as in Bison Alley, Junkyard, Sewer = Buffalo as in Buffalo, NY intimidate = Buffalo as in bully So it roughly turns out as: Buffalo,NY bison [whom] Buffalo,NY bison bully [also] bully Buffalo,NY bison.
- skorgu 17y agoThe way I remember it myself is by building it up in my head first: cows intimidate cows Scranton cows intimidate cows. cows Scranton cows intimidate intimidate cows Scranton cows Scranton cows intimidate intimidate cows Scranton cows Scranton cows intimidate intimidate Scranton cows. Once I've got the structure in my head with pauses to break it up for myself: Buffalo buffalo pause Buffalo buffalo buffalo pause buffalo Buffalo buffalo it's pretty easy to grok (and spit out on cue to the disbelief of others).
- code_devil 17y agoI remember one from grade 5 which is kind of similar ... "I saw a saw to saw a saw " (The Buffalo based is definitely not easy to comprehend in the first go)
- bdr 17y agoThe AI dream: code code codes codes code.
- dryicerx 17y agoI bet Natural Language Processing Engines would crap them selves if they try to parse this correctly. This is why we can't have nice things
- robryan 17y agoWhat I was thinking, worrying giving that I'll probably be doing a fair bit of work in language processing this year.
- wheels 17y agoThat's ok. Biological language processing engines crap themselves if they try to parse this correctly.
- jimbokun 17y agoThe real problem is that an artificial language processing engine will find a parse for it. One actual example I remember is a parse of "New fans run." About the operation of recently acquired fans, right? Well, the lexicon in our system found an instance of "New" as a proper noun (a band or something), the use of "fans" as a transitive verb, and one of the definition of "runs" as a noun (think baseball, for just one example). So you had this proper noun New fanning this abstract usage of runs as the parse that the system selected. This more than anything demonstrated to me the necessity of statistical techniques in NLP (now taken as a given, but a fairly recent development relative to the history of NLP research).
- endtime 17y agoReally? As the sentences get longer, I'd expect NLP engines to have a much easier time with it than people do.
- abecedarius 17y agoI'm always reminded of this by code like Buffalo buffalo = new Buffalo(BUFFALO);
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- zackattack 17y agoShouldn't it be Hacker News Hackers Hack Hacker News Hackers' Hacks?
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- billybob 17y agoOooh! I want to play! Backer News Backers Back Backer News Backers' Backs Racker News Rackers Rack Racker News Rackers' Racks Stacker News Stackers Stack Stacker News Stackers' Stacks
- pmiller2 17y agoI saw a video a while back about Cyc where Lenat talks about how they make sure their AI is still acting somewhat sane by feeding it sentences like this one, or, "Can a can can-can?"
- eelco 17y agoAh, fun with grammar ;) Dutch comedian Kees Torn came up with a (Dutch) sentence, repeating one word 16 times in a row: "Als er bij het drop (waar bergen bergen bergen bergen bergen) Bergen bergen bergen bergen bergen bergen, bergen bergen bergen bergen bergen." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHnpjsR5q6g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHnpjsR5q6g)
- loumf 17y agoNo coke, pepsi
- donaq 17y agoI am also reminded of Marklar from South Park.
- gruseom 17y agoWhen a friend of mine was in grad school, he helped a classmate prepare for her Test of English as a Foreign Language exam. They were going over some fine point about past tenses when, attempting to explain a mistake she had made, he said: If you had had "had" here, you would have had to have had "have" there. She screamed.
- nex3 17y agoInterestingly, one can in fact create valid English sentences of arbitrary length composed entirely of the word "Buffalo." By induction: n = 1 is valid as the imperative of the verb. That is to say, "Buffalo" means "You should harangue someone." n = 2 is valid again as the imperative, this time with a subject: buffalo. That is, "Buffalo buffalo" means "You should harangue some bison." For n > 2, assume that the sentence for n - 1 is valid. This sentence will contain at least one instance of the noun "buffalo" (meaning the animal), either with or without the adjective "Buffalo" (meaning the city) prefixing it. If there is no adjective, we can add one to get an n-length sentence. If there is an adjective, we can replace "Buffalo buffalo" (meaning bison from New York) with "buffalo buffalo buffalo" (meaning bison that are harangued by other bison), again yielding an n-length sentence. Thus, by induction, a buffalo sentence can be constructed for any n.
- CWuestefeld 17y agoIt works for the word "tin" as well.
- Confusion 17y agoA rather tinny sort of word, don't you think?
- sp332 17y agoFor n=2, you have a verb and an object, but no subject.
- JshWright 17y agoThe subject (you) is implied by the imperative.
- sp332 17y agoWhat's with the downvote? I understand the implied subject, but this part: n = 2 is valid again as the imperative, this time with a subject: buffalo. That is, "Buffalo buffalo" means "You should harangue some bison." is wrong. The two "buffalo" are the verb and the object. Neither of them is a subject.
- gjm11 17y agoSimilar but (1) better because it doesn't use coincidental multiple meanings, (2) better because it doesn't use anything so obscure as buffalo=harass, and (3) worse because it needs two different words: oysters oysters oysters split split split "oysters split": oysters come apart into two pieces. "oysters oysters split split": oysters whom oysters split, split: those oysters whom other oysters take apart into two pieces, come apart into two pieces. "oysters oysters oysters split split split": oysters whom (oysters whom oysters split, split) split: those oysters whom (those oysters whom other oysters take apart into two pieces, in turn take apart into two pieces) come apart into two pieces. Much as with the buffalo sentence, this works for arbitrary values of 3.
- compay 17y agoOne in German: Wenn fliegen hinter fliegen fliegen, fliegen fliegen fliegen hinter nach. It means something like, "when flies fly behind flies, then flies fly after flies."
- jimbokun 17y agoShouldn't there be time and arrows in there somewhere?
- LogicHoleFlaw 17y agoTime flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.
- BearOfNH 17y agoTime flies like an arrow; space flies like a bow.
- dreeves 17y agoCorrection: Wenn hinter fliegen fliegen fliegen, fliegen fliegen fliegen nach. It's actually quite sensible in German. Transliterated, it's "When behind flies flies fly, the flies after-fly the flies." Translated it would be more like "When flies fly behind flies, flies are following flies." To "after-fly" is to follow, but by flight. And of course, per usual in German, that verb is split apart with the "after" prefix stuck at the end, which is how you end up -- quite naturally! -- with six fliegens in a row. Confer this gem from Mark Twain's "The Awful German Language": The Germans have another kind of parenthesis, which they make by splitting a verb in two and putting half of it at the beginning of an exciting chapter and the other half at the end of it. Can any one conceive of anything more confusing than that? These things are called "separable verbs." The German grammar is blistered all over with separable verbs; and the wider the two portions of one of them are spread apart, the better the author of the crime is pleased with his performance. A favorite one is reiste ab -- which means departed. Here is an example which I culled from a novel and reduced to English: "The trunks being now ready, he DE- after kissing his mother and sisters, and once more pressing to his bosom his adored Gretchen, who, dressed in simple white muslin, with a single tuberose in the ample folds of her rich brown hair, had tottered feebly down the stairs, still pale from the terror and excitement of the past evening, but longing to lay her poor aching head yet once again upon the breast of him whom she loved more dearly than life itself, PARTED."
- loup-vaillant 17y agoWhich is why overloading and type inference aren't very good friends.
- tcarnell 17y agoHey, it's available: buffalobuffalobuffalobuffalobuffalobuffalobuffalobuff.com :-) ...but I think I prefer BadgerBadgerBadger.com
- seanlinmt 17y agowe have something similar in the hokkien dialect.. which goes .. kong kong kong kong kong kong kong kong kong kong which consists of ... kong kong = grandpa kong = says kong = can kong = hit kong = dizy but you have to get the intonation right .. lol
- dkimball 17y agoAlso http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_D... . It's a private theory of mine that the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods were so lively because "this is an excellent shoulder of pork" sounded exactly like "I will attack your city at dawn"... :)
- biggitybones 17y agoEverytime I come across this I have to go to the wikipedia page to check the grammar. I find these types of sentences incredibly creative (and confusing). A similar thing, inspired by buffalo and illustrated: http://myapokalips.com/show/15#comic http://myapokalips.com/show/15#comic
- ANH 17y agoIn college, my wife was told this sentence by a metaphysics professor. He also used to have acid flashbacks during class.
- andrewvc 17y agoMalkovich, malkovich malkovich malkovich. Malkovich? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur3CQE8xB3c http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur3CQE8xB3c
- philwelch 17y agoWouldn't the sentence "I want to put two hyphens between the words Fish and And, and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign" have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, and after Chips?
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- keefe 17y agomy sentence parser is officially buffalo'd
- lukev 17y agoThe buffalo sentence may be grammatically valid, but it's not "valid" by any real test of human understanding. Chomsky-esque generative grammar can't tell the whole story about human language.
- billybob 17y agoI think that's the point, actually. The fact that a sentence can be grammatically correct but not logically correct, or be both, but still not "make sense," is interesting in itself. It shows how difficult it is to determine whether a sentence is "valid" for speakers of that language. (Chomsky's classic example of "grammatical but not logical" was "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.")
- billybob 17y agoThink of it like this: Chomsky was testing the brain's language parser by handing it weird things and seeing how it reacts. Like you might do with a new programming language: what happens if I try to add strings, or divide them? Is zero true? Is the string "nil" true? Is == different from ===? Can I pass a function into a function? The brain's language center is undocumented, so we try throwing potential sentences at it and see what works or doesn't, then try to reverse engineer what it's doing. The buffalo sentence conforms to the rules we know about word order, and can be logically explained, but somehow it fails. Finding out why is part of the reverse engineering process.
- lukev 17y agoYes... the interesting question is whether it fails because of a "rule" we're not aware of, or because it's simply too complex. The human mind is recursive, but is it simply that it only have a "stack depth" of 3 or 4 and can't parse more deeply than that?
- foldr 17y ago>The human mind is recursive, but is it simply that it only have a "stack depth" of 3 or 4 and can't parse more deeply than that? That was Chomsky and Miller's theory (although they weren't dealing with that particular example).
- barnaby 17y agoWell, it's good to know Buffalo NY has _something_ going for it.
- jrockway 17y agoThat they have a bunch of overgrown cows that harass each other?
- quux 17y agoI like: Oysters oysters eat eat oysters.
- loumf 17y agoI like "The Los Angelos Angels", which means "The The Angels Angels".
- Perceval 17y agoKind of like "Montgomery of the El Alamein," which means Montgomery of the the the Amein.
- dmn 17y agoMind = Blown.
- twelvethirteen 17y agothe article touches on the fact that a sentence of any length could be constructed entirely out of buffalo, but it doesn't really explain how. here's how to make it arbitrarily long: start with "Buffalo[place] buffalo[noun] buffalo[verb] buffalo[noun]" after any "buffalo[noun]", insert "Buffalo[place] buffalo[noun] buffalo[verb]" to change the meaning to 'bison that Buffalo bison intimidate' youve just created a new grammatical sentence of length n+3. iterate and enjoy
- calcnerd256 17y agopumping lemma?
- cadr 17y agoMake sure to click the 'Listen to this article' link at the bottom - many Wikipedia articles are much funnier if someone is reading them to you.
- gprisament 17y agoMalkavich Malkavich, Malkavich Malkavich Malkavich