List of linguistic example sentences

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents 1 Independence 2 Ambiguity 3 Word order 4 Parallels 5 Non-English examples 6 References 7 See also 8 External links

This is a list of linguistic example sentences. They illustrate various linguistic phenomena.

[edit] Independence

• Independence of syntax:

  Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. (Noam Chomsky)

[edit] Ambiguity

• Lexical ambiguity:

  Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. (Groucho Marx)

  Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

  Rose rose to put rose roes on her rows of roses. (Robert J. Baran)

  James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher^[1]

  That that is is that that is not is not is that it it is (Although this is not grammatically correct as is.)

  If it is it, it is it, if it is, it is it, it is!

  For my sign, please put more room between the Smith and and and and and Sons. ("The 'Smith' and 'and,' and 'and' and 'Sons'.)

  If the police police police police, who polices the police police?

• Syntactic ambiguity:

  The man saw the boy with the binoculars.

  We saw her duck.^[2]

  They are hunting dogs.

  The criminal experienced a seizure.

  Police help dog bite victim.

  While the man was hunting the deer ran through the forest.^[3]

• Syntactic ambiguity and incrementality:
  • Reduced relative clauses

    The horse raced past the barn fell.

• Semantic scope ambiguity and anaphora resolution:

  Every farmer who owns a donkey beats it.^[4]

• Embedding

  The rat the cat the dog bit chased escaped.^[5]

  The girl the dog the boy hit bit cried.

[edit] Word order

• Order of adjectives:

  The red big balloon.

• Paraprosdokian:

  I haven't slept for ten days, because that would be too long. (Mitch Hedberg)

  Silence is golden, duct tape is silver

• Syllepsis:

  He carried a strobe light and the responsibility for the lives of his men. (Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried)

  We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately. (Benjamin Franklin)

  He ran his company and the marathon.

• Ending sentence with preposition (avoidance)

  This is the sort of English up with which I will not put. (Attributed by Gowers to Winston Churchill^[6])

  Throw your father down the stairs his hat.

  Throw the baby out the window a piece of bread.

• Ending sentence with preposition (extreme non-avoidance)

  The little girl says to her father, "What did you bring that book that I did not want to be read to out of about Down Under up for?"

[edit] Parallels

• Parallel between noun phrases and verb phrases with respect to argument structure:

  The enemy destroyed the city.

  The enemy's destruction of the city.

[edit] Non-English examples

• German: Die Männer, die vor dem Schokoladenladen Laden laden, laden Ladenmädchen zum Tanzen ein, meaning "The men, who loaded chests in front of the chocolate shop, asked shop girls for a dance".

Or Wenn hinter Fliegen Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen nach, meaning "When flies fly behind flies, flies fly after flies".

Or Wenn hinter Rumkugeln Rumkugeln rumkugeln, kugeln hinter Rumkugeln Rumkugeln rum, meaning "When rum truffles roll around behind rum truffles, rum truffles roll around behind rum-truffles".

• Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian: Bar barbarbarbarbar bar bar barbarbarbarbar, meaning "naked barbarian-bar-barbarian [barbarian usually hanging out in bars for barbarians] carried naked barbarian-bar-barbarian." (This gains extra hilarity when one remembers that the Greek word "barbaroi" was onomatopoeiatic for the "bar-bar-bar" sound Hellenes used to describe foreign language.)

Or Når graver Graver graver grave, graver graver Graver grave for andre, meaning "When digger Graver [his name is Graver] digs graves, digger Graver digs graves for others."

• Finnish: Kokko, kokoo kokoon koko kokko! Koko kokkoko? Koko kokko., meaning "Kokko (a surname), gather up a full bonfire! A full bonfire? A full bonfire."

Vihdoin vihdoin vihdoin, meaning "Finally I was bathing in a sauna with a bunch of birch branchs".

Etsivät etsivät etsivät etsivät etsivät, meaning "The searching detectives are searching the searching detectives".

Piilevät piilevät piilevät, meaning "The hiding diatoms are hiding".

Katos katos katos katos, "Look out, the shed disappeared on the roof.".

• Spanish: ¿Cómo como? ¿Cómo cómo como? Como como como, meaning "How do I eat? What do you mean, how do I eat? I eat how I eat".
• Dutch: Als achter vliegen vliegen vliegen vliegen vliegen vliegen achterna, meaning "If flies fly behind flies, then those flies are flying behind flies".

Or Als achter vliegen vliegen vliegen vliegen vliegen vliegensvlug, meaning "If flies fly behind flies, then those flies are flying as fast as a fly".

Or Als Graven Graven graven graven graven Graven Graven graven, meaning "When counts dig graves for other counts, counts are digging graves for other counts".

Or Als bergen bergen bergen bergen bergen, bergen bergen bergen bergen bergen., meaning "When loads of mountains store loads of (other) mountains, then loads of mountains store loads of mountains."

Or Voor was was was was was is, meaning "Before (the word) was was (the word) was, (the word) was was (the word) is". (Works in English as well, I think.)

Or Van alle zagen die wij ooit zagen zagen zagen zagen wij nog nooit zo zagen zagen zoals wij onze zagen zagen zagen zagen, meaning "Of all saws that ever we observed sawing saws, we never observed saws sawing saws like we observed our own saws sawing saws".

Or Wat Kan kan kan Kan alleen, meaning "Whatever Kan could do, only Kan could do".

• French: Si ton tonton tond ton tonton, ton tonton sera tondu, meaning "If your uncle shears your uncle, your uncle'll be shorn".

Or Si six scies scient six cyprès, six cents scies scient six cents cyprès, meaning "If six saws saw six cypresses, six hundred saws saw six hundred cypresses".

• Icelandic: Ái á Á á á í á, meaning "A farmer named Ái who lives on a farm by the name of Á, owns a female sheep that is in a river".
• Italian: "Chi ara mente"? Chiaramente, Chiara mente (meaning "'Who plows lies?' Clearly, Chiara lies").
• Swedish: Farfar, får får får? Nej, sonson, får får inte får, får får lamm. meaning, "Grandfather, may sheep give birth to sheep? No, grandson, sheep may not give birth to sheep, sheep may give birth to lambs."
• Japanese: Buta wo buta wa buta. Buta reta buta ga buta buta wo buta. meaning "What hit the pig was a pig. The pig that was hit hit the pig that hit it."
• Malay: Sayang, sayang sayang sayang, sayang sayang sayang? meaning "Darling, I love you dear, do you love me?"
• Romanian: Stanca sta-n castan ca Stan, meaning "(The girl named) Stanca stood in a chestnut tree like (the boy named) Stan".
• Russian: Косил косой косой косой косой косой, meaning "A drunk cross-eyed hare was mowing grass with a curved scythe".
• Hungarian: A követ követ követ, meaning "The envoy follows a stone".
• Mandarin Chinese: Mǎ mãma qí mǎ. Mǎ màn má. Mǎ mãma mà mǎ ma?, meaning "Mother Ma (a surname) rides a horse. The horse is slow, obviously. Does Mother Ma scold the horse?"

[edit] References

1. ^ 3802 - Operator Jumble
2. ^ Solutions to Semantics Problems
3. ^ Thematic Roles Along the Garden Path Linger
4. ^ archive of CSI 5386 Donkey Sentence Discussion
5. ^ Kimball, John (1973). "Seven principles of surface structure parsing in natural language". Cognition 2: 15–47. 
6. ^ Discussed at Wikiquote

[edit] See also

• Garden path sentence, a sentence that illustrates that humans process language one word at a time
• Gradient well-formedness
• Grammaticality
• Paraprosdokian, a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe the first part

[edit] External links

• The Trouble with NLP: Some additional demonstrations of why these and similar examples are hard for computers to deal with when attempting natural language processing.