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Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

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The word buffalo may refer to an animal but has other meanings as well.

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 by William J. Rapaport.

Sentences of this type, although not in such a refined form, have been known for a long time. A classical example is a proverb "Don't trouble trouble until trouble troubles you".

Sentence construction

The sentence uses four possible readings of the word "buffalo":

  1. An American Bison, white buffalo, or African buffalo
  2. Buffalo, New York, the second-largest city in the state of New York
  3. A verb meaning to confuse, deceive, or intimidate
  4. The plural form of "buffalo" (the fact that enables the omission of articles)

Keeping in mind these definitions, the sentence turns into the description of the pecking order in the social hierarchy of buffalo from the Buffalo zoo:

buffalo from Buffalo buffalo from Buffalo intimidate intimidate buffalo from Buffalo.

Other than the obvious confusion caused by the homophones, the sentence is difficult to parse for several reasons:

  1. The use of "buffalo" as a verb is not particularly common
  2. The removal of syntactically significant words ("the", "that", etc.) to such a degree is not a common linguistic approach
  3. The omission of punctuation makes it difficult to read the flow of the sentence
  4. The example has the structure of a garden path sentence, i.e., the sentence that cannot be parsed by reading one word at a time without backtracking.
  5. The length of the sentence reaches the limitations of human ability to parse structure and meaning

Similar examples

  • A joke, in which a conductor, when asked how long will the train stay at the station, answered "From two to two to two two".
  • "If the sentence that had had had had had had, it would have been correct."
  • "I wonder whether the wether will weather the weather, or whether the weather the wether will kill" is a similar animal-related expression used to teach about homophones and syntax.
  • A brilliant short story by Robert Sheckley Shall We Have a Little Talk? (a 1965 Nebula Award for Best Novelette) describes a planet where language mutates so fast that an Earthman colonizer cannot catch up with it: the yesterday's version he learned overnight hypnopedically, tomorrow is no longer in use. The Earthman accepted his defeat when he was addressed thusly: Mun mun-mun-mun. Mun mun mun; mun mun mun; mun mun. Mun, mun mun mun--mun mun mun. Mun-mun? Mun mun mun mun!.

References

  1. Rapaport, William J. 19 February 1992. "Message 1: Re: 3.154 Parsing Challenges". Accessed 14 September 2006.
  2. Anatoly Liberman. "Weathering the Weather in Word History". Retrieved 2006-09-16.

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