Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
The title of this entry (if you take "buffalo" to be 1) the obvious noun with identical plural, 2) capitalised, the proper noun referring to the American city, and 3) a verb meaning approximately "bully") is a grammatically correct sentence of English. (I first came across it in The Language Instinct by Stephen Pinker, but was reminded of it recently.)
In fact, according to Wikipedia, for any n ≥ 1, buffalon is a grammatically correct sentence, if you disregard capitalisation. ("Buffalo!", "Buffalo buffalo", "Buffalo buffalo buffalo", etc.)
Don't you just love natural language?
[ Entry posted at: Thu 10 May 2007 15:36:16 BST | 1 comment(s)... | Cat: Random ]
Aeternus writes:
Buffalo buffalo?
[ Sat 12 May 2007 10:27:04 BST ]