Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

Sentence composed of homonyms

S = sentence
NP = noun phrase
RC = relative clause
VP = verb phrase
PN = proper noun
N = noun
V = verb
“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo” is a grammatically correct sentence in English that’s usually offered for instance of how homonyms and homophones can be utilized to create difficult linguistic constructs by way of lexical ambiguity. It has been mentioned in literature in varied kinds since 1967, when it appeared in Dmitri Borgmann‘s Beyond Language: Adventures in Word and Thought.
The sentence employs three distinct meanings of the phrase buffalo:
- As an attributive noun (performing as an adjective) to confer with a particular place named Buffalo, corresponding to the town of Buffalo, New York;
- Because the verb to buffalo, which means (in American English[1]) “to bully, harass, or intimidate” or “to baffle”; and
- As a noun to confer with the animal the buffalo (usually known as bison outdoors of North America). The plural can also be buffalo.
A semantically equal kind preserving the unique phrase order is: “Buffalonian bison that different Buffalonian bison bully additionally bully Buffalonian bison.”
Sentence development

The sentence is unpunctuated and makes use of three completely different readings of the phrase “buffalo”. So as of their first use, these are:
- a. a metropolis named Buffalo. That is used as a noun adjunct within the sentence;
- n. the noun buffalo, an animal, within the plural (equal to “buffaloes” or “buffalos”), with the intention to keep away from articles.
- v. the verb “buffalo” which means to outwit, confuse, deceive, intimidate, or baffle.
The sentence is syntactically ambiguous; one doable parse (marking every “buffalo” with its a part of speech as proven above) is as follows:
Buffaloa buffalon Buffaloa buffalon buffalov buffalov Buffaloa buffalon.
When grouped syntactically, that is equal to: [(Buffalonian bison) (Buffalonian bison intimidate)] intimidate (Buffalonian bison).
As a result of the sentence has a restrictive clause, there may be no commas. The relative pronouns “which” or “that” might seem between the second and third phrases of the sentence, as in Buffalo buffalo that Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo; when this pronoun is omitted, the relative clause turns into a reduced relative clause.
An expanded type of the sentence that preserves the unique phrase order is:
“Buffalo bison that different Buffalo bison bully additionally bully Buffalo bison.”
Thus, the parsed sentence claims that bison who are intimidated or bullied by bison do themselves intimidate or bully bison (at the least within the metropolis of Buffalo – implicitly, Buffalo, New York):
- Buffalo buffalo (animals known as “buffalo” from the town of Buffalo) [that] Buffalo buffalo buffalo (that the identical type of animals from the town bully) buffalo Buffalo buffalo (bully these animals from that metropolis).
- [Those] buffalo(es) from Buffalo [that are intimidated by] buffalo(es) from Buffalo intimidate buffalo(es) from Buffalo.
- Bison from Buffalo, New York, who’re intimidated by different bison of their group in flip intimidate different bison of their group.
- The buffalo from Buffalo who’re buffaloed by buffalo from Buffalo buffalo (verb) different buffalo from Buffalo.
- Buffalo buffalo (principal clause topic) [that] Buffalo buffalo (subordinate clause topic) buffalo (subordinate clause verb) in flip buffalo (main clause verb) Buffalo buffalo (principal clause direct object).
- Buffalo from Buffalo [that] buffalo [from] Buffalo buffalo [in turn] buffalo buffalo [from] Buffalo.


Utilization
Thomas Tymoczko has identified that there’s nothing particular about eight “buffalos”;[2] any sentence consisting solely of the phrase “buffalo” repeated any variety of occasions is grammatically appropriate. The shortest is “Buffalo!”, which may be taken as a verbal imperative instruction to bully somebody (“[You,] buffalo!”) with the implied topic “you” eliminated,[3]: 99–100, 104 ; or, as a noun exclamation, expressing e.g. {that a} buffalo has been sighted, or as an adjectival exclamation, e.g. as a response to the query, “the place are you from?” Tymoczko makes use of the sentence for instance illustrating rewrite rules in linguistics.[3]: 104–105
Origin
The concept that one can assemble a grammatically appropriate sentence consisting of nothing however repetitions of “buffalo” was independently discovered a number of occasions within the twentieth century. The earliest recognized written instance, “Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo”, seems within the unique manuscript for Dmitri Borgmann‘s 1965 guide Language on Vacation, although the chapter containing it was omitted from the printed model.[4] Borgmann recycled among the materials from this chapter, together with the “buffalo” sentence, in his 1967 guide, Beyond Language: Adventures in Word and Thought.[5]: 290 In 1972, William J. Rapaport, then a graduate scholar at Indiana University, got here up with variations containing 5 and ten cases of “buffalo”.[6] He later used each variations in his educating, and in 1992 posted them to the LINGUIST List.[6][7] A sentence with eight consecutive buffalos is featured in Steven Pinker‘s 1994 guide The Language Instinct for instance of a sentence that’s “seemingly nonsensical” however grammatical. Pinker names his scholar, Annie Senghas, because the inventor of the sentence.[8]: 210
Neither Rapaport, Pinker, nor Senghas have been initially conscious of the sooner coinages.[6] Pinker discovered of Rapaport’s earlier instance solely in 1994, and Rapaport was not knowledgeable of Borgmann’s sentence till 2006.[6]
Variations of the linguistic oddity may be constructed with different phrases which equally concurrently function collective noun, adjective, and verb, a few of which want no capitalization (corresponding to “police”).[9]
See additionally
Common:
Different linguistically complicated sentences:
References
- ^
- ^ Henle, James; Garfield, Jay; Tymoczko, Thomas (2011). Candy Cause: A Area Information to Trendy Logic. John Wiley and Sons. ISBN 978-1118078631.
- ^ a b Thomas Tymoczko; James M. Henle (2000). Sweet reason: a field guide to modern logic (2 ed.). Birkhäuser. ISBN 978-0-387-98930-3. Archived from the unique on 22 April 2020. Retrieved 23 September 2016.
- ^ Eckler, A. Ross Jr. (November 2005). “The Borgmann Apocrypha”. Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics. 38 (4): 258–260. Archived from the unique on 1 November 2014. Retrieved 9 December 2014.
- ^ Borgmann, Dmitri A. (1967). Beyond Language: Adventures in Word and Thought. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. OCLC 655067975.
- ^ a b c d Rapaport, William J. (5 October 2012). “A History of the Sentence ‘Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.’“. College at Buffalo Laptop Science and Engineering. Archived from the unique on 21 June 2008. Retrieved 7 December 2014.
- ^ Rapaport, William J. (19 February 1992). “Message 1: Re: 3.154 Parsing Challenges”. LINGUIST List. Archived from the original on 19 October 2009. Retrieved 14 September 2006.
- ^ Pinker, Steven (1994). The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. New York: William Morrow and Firm, Inc.
- ^ Gärtner, Hans-Martin (2002). Generalized Transformations and Past. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. p. 58. ISBN 978-3050032467.
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