List of linguistic example sentences

The following is a partial list of linguistic example sentences illustrating various linguistic phenomena.

Interaction of syntax and semantics

Syntax and meaning can interact, such that although a sentence is syntactically valid, and all of its words are meaningful, the sentence as a whole is meaningless. Examples of this type of sentence include:

• Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. (Noam Chomsky)
• The gostak distims the doshes. (Andrew Ingraham.)

Ambiguity

Different types of ambiguity which are possible in language.

Lexical ambiguity

Demonstrations of words which have multiple meanings dependent on context.

• Will Will will the will to Will? (Will Will [a person] will [bequeath] the will [a document] to Will [a second person]?)
• Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
• Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. (Buffaloes from Buffalo, NY, whom buffaloes from Buffalo bully, bully buffaloes from Buffalo.)
• Rose rose to put rose roes on her rows of roses. (Robert J. Baran) (Rose [a girl] rose [stood] to put rose [pink-colored] roes [fish eggs as fertilizer] on her rows of roses [flower].)
• James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher (With punctuation: "James, while John had had 'had', had had 'had had'. 'Had had' had had a better effect on the teacher.")
• That that is is that that is not is not is that it it is (Grammatically corrected as: "That that is, is. That that is not, is not. Is that it? It is.")
• If it is it, it is it, if it is, it is it, it is!
• Can can can can can can can can can can. ("Examples of the can can dance that other examples of the same dance are able to outshine, or figuratively to put into the trashcan, are themselves able to outshine examples of the same dance." It could alternatively be interpreted as a question, "Is it possible for examples of the dance that have been outshined to outshine others?" or several other ways.)
• If the police police police police, who polices the police police? Police police police police police police!
• In a similar vein, Martin Gardner offered the example: "Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign' have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?"

Syntactic ambiguity

Demonstrations of ambiguity between alternate syntactic structures underlying a sentence.

• The man saw the boy with the binoculars.
• They are hunting dogs.
• Free whales.
• Police help dog bite victim.
• He saw that gas can explode.
• We saw her duck.
• Hole found in changing room wall; police are looking into it.
• The old man the boats.
• In Animal Crackers, Groucho Marx (as Captain Rufus T. Spaulding) quipped: "I once shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I'll never know."
• As a special treat for our Easter service, Mrs. Smith will lay an egg on the altar.

Syntactic ambiguity and incrementality

Demonstrations of how incremental syntactic parsing leads to infelicitous constructions and interpretations.

• Reduced relative clauses
  • The horse raced past the barn fell.
• While the man was hunting the deer ran through the forest.

Scope ambiguity and anaphora resolution

• Every farmer who owns a donkey beats it.

Embedding

• The rat the cat the dog bit chased escaped.

Word order

Order of adjectives

• The red big balloon.

Ending sentence with preposition

Prescriptive grammar has in the past prohibited "preposition stranding": ending sentences with prepositions (traditionally defined). This "rule" appears to have been invented in 1672 by John Dryden; for a long time thereafter it was uncritically recited. It had no basis in linguistic fact in 1672 and has none now.

Avoidance

• This is the sort of English up with which I will not put. (Attributed by Gowers to Winston Churchill. There is no convincing evidence that Churchill said this, and good reason to believe that he did not.) The sentence "does not demonstrate the absurdity of using [prepositional phrase] fronting instead of stranding; it merely illustrates the ungrammaticality resulting from fronting something that is not a constituent".
• Throw the baby out the window a piece of bread.

Compound use

• The little boy says to his father, "Daddy, what did you bring that book that I don't want to be read to out of up for?"
• What did you turn your socks from inside out to outside in for?^{[citation needed]}

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.

Neurolinguistic examples

N400

• She spread the bread with socks.

Combinatorial complexity

Demonstrations of sentences which are unlikely to have ever been said, although the combinatorial complexity of the linguistic system makes them possible.

• Colorless green ideas sleep furiously (Noam Chomsky) - example that is grammatically correct but based on semantic combinations that are contradictory and therefore would not normally occur.
• Hold the newsreader's nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers. (Stephen Fry, in A Bit of Fry & Laurie, series 1, episode 2)

Non-English examples

Anishinaabemowin/Ojibwe

• Gdaa-naanaanaa, Aanaa, naa?, meaning "We should fetch Anna, shouldn't we?".

Latin

• King Edward II of England was killed, reportedly after Adam of Orleton, one of his gaolers, received a message, probably from Mortimer, reading "Edwardum occidere nolite timere bonum est". This can be read either as "Edwardum occidere nolite; timere bonum est" ("Do not kill Edward; it is good to be afraid [to do so]") or as "Edwardum occidere nolite timere; bonum est" ("Do not be afraid to kill Edward; [to do so] is good"). This ambiguous sentence has been much discussed by various writers, including John Harington and contributors to Notes and Queries.

Mandarin Chinese

• Various sentences using the syllables mā, má, mǎ, mà, and ma are often used to illustrate the importance of tones to foreign learners. One example: Chinese: 妈妈骑马马慢妈妈骂马; pinyin: māma qí mǎ, mǎ màn, māma mà mǎ; literally "Mother is riding a horse, the horse is slow, mother scolds the horse".
• Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den – poem of 92 characters, all with the sound shi (in 4 different tones) when read in Modern Standard Mandarin

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
• One syllable article, Chinese phonological ambiguity

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.