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Revision as of 21:12, 14 September 2006
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo is a grammatically valid sentence used as an example of how homophones can be used to create complicated constructs. It featured in Steven Pinker's 1994 book The Language Instinct, but is known to have been around before February 1992 when it was posted to Linguist List.
Sentence construction
The sentence uses three possible meanings of the word "buffalo":
- An American Bison
- Buffalo, New York, the second-largest city in the state of New York
- A verb meaning to confuse, deceive, or intimidate
Rewritten using these definitions, the sentence could be rewritten:
- Buffalo bison Buffalo bison intimidate intimidate Buffalo bison.
This only leaves "Buffalo" referring to the city.
Parsing difficulties
Other than the obvious confusion caused by the homophones, the sentence is difficult to parse for several reasons:
- The use of "buffalo" as a verb is not particularly common
- The removal of redundant words ("the", "that", etc.) to such a degree is not a common linguistic approach
- The omission of punctuation makes it difficult to read the flow of the sentence
- The length of the sentence reaches the limitations of human ability to parse structure and meaning
References
- Pinker, Steven. 1994. The Language Instinct p210.
- Rapaport, William J. 19 February 1992. "Message 1: Re: 3.154 Parsing Challenges". Accessed 14 September 2006.
External links
- "Buffaloing buffalo" at Language Log, 20 January 2005
- Easdown, David. "Teaching mathematics: the gulf betweensemantics (meaning) and syntax (form)" Template:Pdf.