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James while John had had had ... had had had a better effect on the teacher
- rrrhys 14y ago"John wrote 'had'. James wrote 'had had'. James' answer had a better effect on the teacher."
- crntaylor 14y agoJames's answer had had a better effect on the teacher ;)
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- homonculus 14y agoOnly if the previous two sentences contain "had written."
- gruseom 14y agoNo, crntaylor has it right: we're supposed to understand that James wrote what he did because it had had a better effect on the teacher in the past. That's how you can justify squeezing that one last "had" in there.
- nathell 14y agoThis can go on indefinitely, recursively. The story behind this sentence is of two students comparing their texts, the one with "had" (version 1), the other with "had had" version 1, yielding 11 "had"s in a row. Call that story S_0. Now imagine a story S_(n+1) where two students write texts discussing story S_n, with version 1 replaced by the consecutive row of "had"s from S_n, and version 2 replaced by a similar row of "had"s, but one longer.
- philwelch 14y agoAn example which itself suggests a possible recursion: "Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen 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, as well as after Chips?"
- vacri 14y agoFish and And and And and Chips The correct way to do this sentence is "I want to put hyphens between the words Fish, And,* and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign" *The Oxford comma makes a lot more sense because it reflects how we speak, but even if you omit it, this is the correct way to present a list of items - you don't use 'and' between every one. Edit: I was wondering which other rules I was breaking with that sentence - I'm sure there's more :)
- vorg 14y agoYou'd better write hyphens, as in "I want to put hyphens between the words Fish, And, and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign".
- philwelch 14y agoI'm pretty sure the correct way to write any of these grammatical puzzler sentences removes the grammatical puzzle, because grammatical puzzles are difficult and impede understanding, which is presumably the entire purpose of language to begin with.
- notdrunkatall 14y agoBuffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo...
- niggler 14y agoDidn't someone show that every single sequence of words buffalo* (buffalo, buffalo buffalo, buffalo buffalo buffalo, ...) is valid?
- chimeracoder 14y agoI don't have the source for this, but I'm almost positive you are correct. I believe I remember an inductive proof that demonstrated this.
- Pitarou 14y agoHere's how it works: "buffalo" can function as a verb (bully) and a plural noun (bison). So we can write "Bison bully bison." as "Buffalo buffalo buffalo." I'm going to tag my groups of bison with numbers. > Bison(1) bully bison(0). > Buffalo(1) buffalo buffalo(0). (3 words) Now, we can qualify bison(1), by stating that they are bullied by another group of bison, which I'll call bison(2). We can rewrite "who are bullied by bison(2)" as "bison(2) bully" (similar to rewriting "food that is liked by me" as "food I like") so we get: > Bison(1) who are bullied by bison(2) bully, bison(0). > Buffalo(1) buffalo(2) buffalo buffalo buffalo(0). (5 words) We can modify bison(2) in the same way we modified bison(1), by stating that they are bullied by yet another group of bison, called bison(3): > Bison(1) bison(2) bison(3) bully bully bully bison(0). > Buffalo(1) buffalo(2) buffalo(3) buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo(0). (7 words) And so on... > Buffalo(1) buffalo(2) buffalo(3) buffalo(4) buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo(0). (9 words) > Buffalo(1) buffalo(2) buffalo(3) buffalo(4) buffalo(5) buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo(0). (11 words) So that gives us sentences of lengths 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, ... words. We can add a word to each sentence by just adding the qualifier "Buffalo" (meaning "from the city of Buffalo") before buffalo(0). This gives us sentences of lengths 4, 6, 8, ...: > Bison(1) bully bison(0) from the city of Buffalo. > Buffalo(1) buffalo Buffalo buffalo(0). (4 words) > Buffalo(1) buffalo(2) buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo(0). (6 words) > Buffalo(1) buffalo(2) buffalo(3) buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo(0). (8 words) So now we just need the sentences of lengths 1 and 2, which we can do by using the imperative. I.e. we give the general instruction "Bully." or the more specific instruction "Bully bison.": > Buffalo. (1 word) > Buffalo buffalo. (2 words) The issue remains: can we call a sentence "valid" if it is entirely incomprehensible?
- eliben 14y agoFolks should first learn to correctly use "its" vs. "it's" and "lets" vs. "let's". Then graduate to correct past-perfect usage :-)
- dmckeon 14y agoMnemonic: his, hers, its. Works for me when memory and other methods do not.
- pyre 14y agoI always remember that it's "it's" because the apostrophe replaces the missing letters in contractions. E.g. it is => it's The possessive of 'it' doesn't need to replace any letters, so it's just "its."
- blahedo 14y agoIf you are using this as a mnemonic about its/it's, this is fine; but your statement of it is as a rule ("the apostrophe replaces the missing letters in contractions") is misleadingly incomplete. Apostrophes do that, but they also serve as a possessive marker in the general case ("Sam's"), which is of course why its/it's causes so much trouble in the first place.
- pyre 14y ago| If you are using this as a mnemonic about its/it's, | this is fine; but your statement of it is as a rule No need to be so pedantic. We're not teaching an English course here, we're talking about mnemonics for its/it's. If you need a general rule, how about: when a possessive and a contraction collide, the contraction wins
- blahedo 14y agoNo need; I think the original formulation---as a mnemonic---is just fine. We don't really need a "general rule" here anyway, and to be honest, English orthography and "general rules" don't really go well together. The only reason I posted at all is because linguistics is an area where a lot of quite intelligent people hold some extremely unexamined (and incorrect) beliefs, and there is furthermore a common tendency to propagate those beliefs as if they were fact. As a result, whenever I see someone articulating anything that is formulated like a general rule about a language (or about language in general), I try to make corrections where I can.
- speeder 14y agoAnd I thought that Portuguese could be ambiguous.... I don't think these.sorts of phrases are valid in Portuguese.
- personlurking 14y agoCan you give an example of its ambiguity? I speak Portuguese but nothing ambiguous is coming to mind at this particular moment.
- slammdunc23 14y agoIn my Portuguese class we were given this ambiguous phrase as a riddle: "Maria toma banho porque sua mãe disse ela traga a toalha." We had to make those words make sense only by adding punctuation and without changing the order of any words. Can you figure it out? For those who don't speak Portuguese, the phrase above translates to: "Maria takes a bath because her mom said to her bring the towel." Doesn't make much sense! The trick is that "sua," which means "her" when the following noun is feminine, is also the present third-person singular of the verb "suar," meaning "to sweat." Thus, with a few commas and quotation marks, it suddenly makes sense: Maria toma banho porque sua. "Mãe," disse ela, "traga a toalha." = Maria takes a bath because she sweats. "Mom," she said, "bring the towel." Not nearly as ambiguous as the "had had had had" example, but a similar lesson regarding the need for punctuation. Edit: as personlurking pointed out, suar is "to sweat," not (as I put originally) "to smell." Thanks for catching that!
- personlurking 14y agoOh, yes, I remember that one. Portuguese is not my first language, but I am fluent. I've been given that phrase before (and failed on the suar part despite knowing that verb). Tricky, indeed. Just a small correction, suar is to sweat. I recall a protest sign that said "Veta Dilma!", or "Veto Dilma!" (the President of Brazil), but the protester meant to put a comma in there, as in "Veto, Dilma!" because the protest was about a bill running through congress. Another one was "Mesmo sujo, governo quer rio Pinheiros sem cheiro" (Even though it's dirty, the government wants the Pinheiros river to be rid of the bad smell). The problem is the wording which makes it seem like the government is dirty, and not the river. Better would have been "Governo quer rio Pinheiros sem mau cheiro, mesmo que sujo" (The government wants the Pinheiros river without the bad smell, even though it's dirty.).
- GhotiFish 14y agoNotice my name? Some clever bugger managed to get ghoti and ghoughpteighbteau doesn't fit. Fun fact: I do not know how to spell ghoughpteighbteau, but I can type it.
- artsrc 14y agoFunctional languages provide the ability to (promote?) write expressions that remind me of this sentence. Just because you can do without temporaries does not mean you should.
- lclarkmichalek 14y agoHow so? The problem comes from having a highly context sensitive grammar, which is hardly something I associate specifically with functional languages; C++ is the usual language that people mock for having an all but Turing complete grammar. I guess the other obvious candidate is Lisp, but that's a different beast all together.
- artsrc 14y agoI agree with you that the context sensitive grammar make this sentence hard to parse. However if you look at the clarifications of meaning they break things into bits. In some languages (e.g.: Java without lambdas), you can't write a function without giving it a name. You have to break things into bits and give them names. In the functional languages you can just create a lambda and use it. In a functional style conditionals return values you can use directly. In languages like Java you end up having to assign to temporaries in the branches of the if.
- slurgfest 14y agoAs English, this stuff is totally incomprehensible and unusable. Absolutely nothing is conveyed to actual human English speakers by saying the word 'buffalo' 400 times in a row. If it is 'grammatical' then it is grammatical by virtue of conforming to some idealized grammar. But when this grammar is so far off not just from anything people say, but anything they can actually understand, it really only means that the idea that this grammar models real English has been reduced to total absurdity.
- tjr 14y agoI'm not convinced this one is even grammatical. At minimum, omitting the semicolon should make it a run-on sentence.
- philwelch 14y agoThe trick to all of these sentences is to omit otherwise necessary punctuation. The rare exceptions are sentences describing recursive concepts. For instance, if you have a radar detector, the police will catch you because they have a radar detector detector, which makes it imperative that you own a radar detector detector detector. Here's another example: who polices the police? If there were any one agency in charge of that, certainly we would call them the police police. But who polices the police police? Clearly, the police police police police the police police.
- Dylan16807 14y agoThere may be a lack of pronunciation but written English has clear rules demanding punctuation. The use of quoted words without quotation marks in the OP 'sentence' is ridiculous. Buffalo buffalo and radar detector detector detector are much more valid.
- philwelch 14y agoUgh, I meant punctuation. (Edited my comment to reflect that as well, but let the record stand that it originally had "pronunciation".) My brain puts the words "punctuation" and "pronunciation" in the same hash bucket so I can never get the right one out reliably.
- pfarrell 14y agoWouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen 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, as well as after Chips?
- drakeandrews 14y agoNo. I'm going to go with no. If you'll excuse me, I need to go lie down because that sentence broke something in my understanding of english.
- philwelch 14y agoWouldn't the sentence, "Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen 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, as well as after Chips?" have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and between and and between, and between between 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 And, and and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and and, and and and and, and and and and, and and and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and and, and and and and, And and and and, And and and and, And and and Chips, as well as after Chips?
- anonymous 14y agoI think you accidentally a whole bottle.
- gruseom 14y agoA friend of mine tells a story that's about as close as real life gets to this kind of language trick. He was helping a friend in college study for her Test of English as a Foreign Language. She was working on past tenses and, sincerely attempting to explain a mistake she'd made, he told her: "If you had had 'had' here, you would have had to have had 'had' there as well." Whereupon she screamed.
- AaronBBrown 14y agoDuring an English class in High School, my teacher (we'll call him Mr. Jones) came into the classroom and saw the following written on the blackboard. YOU SUCK JONES Mr. Jones proceeded to make this into a lesson about the importance of commas. YOU SUCK, JONES and YOU, SUCK JONES have wildly different meanings.
- drakeandrews 14y agoThere was a sign in front of a lake saying: PRIVATE PROPERTY NO SWIMMING ALLOWED But by adding a few punctuation marks: PRIVATE PROPERTY? NO, SWIMMING ALLOWED. The meaning of the sign was reversed.
- chinpokomon 14y agoI get a chuckle out of the SLOW CHILDREN signs. Should you read that as: Slow Children or Slow, Children? When you see a DEAF CHILD sign nearby, the inappropriate interpretation is reinforced.
- peteretep 14y agoWe learned something pretty useful at the bird sanctuary: "Quiet birds have ears".
- codeka 14y agoOr that episode of the Simpons where Marge saw "SUGAR FREE DONUTS" until Apu added a comma between "sugar" and "free", and explained that it was actually sugar with free donuts.
- vacri 14y agoI do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting, nevertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality counterbalancing indecipherability transcendentalizes intercommunication's incomprehensibleness. word 1 = 1 letter, word 20 = 20 letters. A friend didn't like "intercommunication's", but hasn't replied on the worth of 'intercommunicationy'...
- mattquiros 14y agoBut isn't the "while John had had 'had'" segment a dangling modifier and hence, this sentence is wrong? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangling_modifier http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangling_modifier