Talk:Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

"Sentence Construction"

This section seems to be wrong. It states that the first usage in the sentence refers to the city of Buffalo. I don't see how this is so. With "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo", the first usage refers to the plural noun "buffalo". The second is the verb "buffalo". The third is the proper noun "Buffalo". The fourth is the plural noun "buffalo". (i.e. Bison bully Buffalo bison.) Right? Joefromrandb (talk) 01:28, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

"Buffalo bison buffalo Buffalo bison." means "Some NYS bison bully other NYS bison." When it's written with five words, the first refers to the city. Chrisrus (talk) 04:47, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Correct, but it's not written with five words. Remember, the third "buffalo" is capitalized. Thus, the section "Sentence Construction" is incorrect. It can certainly be done with five words, but the article (i.e. the original sentence) uses four. Joefromrandb (talk) 05:34, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

With four words, it could be only either "NYS bison bully bison" or "Bison bully NYS Bison." The former capitalizes none but the first, but the second also capitalizes the third word. So if the first and third are capitalized, the first word just means "bison". Chrisrus (talk) 06:21, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Right. Which is why I'm saying that the section is incorrect. Joefromrandb (talk) 08:39, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not clear on what you're saying. The "Sentence Construction" section analyzes the full eight-word sentence that forms the title of the article. In that sentence, the first word does indeed refer to the city, as analyzed. What part, exactly, do you find incorrect? Powers ^T 15:55, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

The first word is what I find incorrect. As I read it, it does not refer to the city of Buffalo, but to the plural noun "buffalo". "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo; buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo". "Bison bully Buffalo bison; bison bully Buffalo bison." Joefromrandb (talk) 17:55, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

It's impossible for the first word in the eight-word sentence to refer to the city of Buffalo, when the third word is capitalized. That would read, "Buffalo bison Buffalo bison", as opposed to "Bison bully Buffalo bison". Joefromrandb (talk) 18:14, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

This article previously included an alternate, ten-word sentence, that read, "Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo; Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo". It wound up being removed, as original research. In this construction, the first word does indeed refer to the city of Buffalo (Buffalo bison bully Buffalo bison). However, in the eight-word sentence, which is what the article is analyzing, the first word refers not to the city, but to the plural noun "buffalo". This is why I am stating that the "Sentence Construction" section is incorrect. Joefromrandb (talk) 18:19, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

It's not incorrect. Read the whole section: "New York bison whom other New York bison bully, themselves bully New York bison". Powers ^T 20:56, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, Powers, but I fear you're missing my point. In order for the sentence to be interpreted that way, it would have to read, "Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo". It does not. It reads, "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo". Note that the third "buffalo" is capitalized. The third "buffalo" (capital "B") is the one that refers to the city of Buffalo. Joefromrandb (talk) 01:37, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Strike that. I see what you're saying now. The sentence can be interpreted more than one way, but I understand how it's being used in the section now. Thanks for the responses! Joefromrandb (talk) 02:20, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm glad you finally got it figured out. The question is, does your confusion reflect a need for the "sentence construction" section to be re-written for clarity? If you persisted so long unable to understand it, perhaps it is unclear. Powers ^T 14:21, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it needs to be re-written. When I ignored my own interpretation and paid close attention to the text it became clear. Joefromrandb (talk) 01:00, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

No worries! Thank you for the excuse discuss the article. Chrisrus (talk) 02:43, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Attempting to create other single word sentences....

Trying to do this with other words. So far the best I've come up with is a 5 word sentence only using the word "likes". "Likes likes likes Likes likes". For this sentence to make sense, and be grammatically correct, there would be a Facebook page called "Likes", or a person who's name was simply "Likes". then they could like the likes they like or "Likes likes likes Likes likes".If there is a way to make this longer, while still maintaining the structure of a basic sentence and still only using the one word, I haven't come up with it yet.

Given that Talk:Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo#I_gave_22s2222s2.21 some fish, such as the angler fish, fish other fish, if the fish that fish fish also fish other fish, we can say that (the) fish (that) fish fish (also) fish (other) fish. Now the question is, could it be established that fish-fish exist? Is there such a thing as a fish-fish? If it would be granted that, while jellyfish and starfish and cuttlefish and such may be "fish" in some obsolete Anglo-Saxon sense of the word fish, they aren't really fish-fish, if you know what I mean, than we could say that (the) fish (that some) fish-fish fish also fish fish-fish, we could say that "Fish-fish fish-fish fish fish fish-fish". Chrisrus (talk) 18:01, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

That is a bit of a stretch. "Fish-fish?" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.154.231.102 (talk) 17:02, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

He turned to the waiter and explained: "No, not starfish or jellyfish! I mean real, honest-to-goodness fish-fish, as nature intended and science describes!" The waiter understood, apologized and went back into the kitchen and had the cook prepare some regular fish-fish - no jellyfish or cuttlefish - real fish-fish.

Chrisrus (talk) 22:59, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't think fish-fish is a stretch at all. I often talk about tea-tea for the same reason - to distinguish it from herbal teas (tisanes which are not made with actual tea). On the other hand, 'fish fish fish' is a stretch, in my dialect of English - fish might fish for fish, but in standard, British English, 'fish' is not a transitive verb unless it's combined with a preposition - fish for, or fish in. 'Likes' doesn't work very well, but the article features various other words that work, and I wrote a program here to generate random sentences featuring those words in various combinations. --Oolong (talk) 13:15, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Examples

I just made an edit to add an example that doesn't use buffalo or homonyms but has the same sentence structure. Or at least I hope it does. I have been trying to understand this "Buffalo..." sentence for years without success. But today on freenode, one "Klisz" gave me an example that immediately made everything clear to me: "Red apples green people eat destroy angry chickens." I thought it would be helpful to other wikipedia readers out there, so I came up with a slightly more logical one: "Intrusive laws crooked politicians write trample unalienable rights."

I think it would be beneficial to take it a step further and break the sentence down into parts through conversation. What do you think of the following?

"Intrusive laws trample unalienable rights." "Which intrusive laws?" "The intrusive laws politicians write." --Daniel (talk) 04:48, 10 May 2012 (UTC) "Cats dogs chase chase mice." is the same structure.

I've removed that example, partly because I think it constitutes original research, but mostly because it made that second paragraph a lot more confusing. DoctorKubla (talk) 09:13, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo

It could be made 11 long like this,

THE buffalo FROM Buffalo WHO ARE buffaloED BY buffalo FROM Buffalo, buffalo (verb) OTHER buffalo FROM Buffalo WHO ARE buffaloED BY buffalo FROM Buffalo. --Nad (talk) 00:53, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

The NYS bison who are bullied by NSY bison bully NYS bison who are bullied by NYS bison? Chrisrus (talk)

Yes, he's exactly correct I recently was working on this problem and came to the same result. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.19.150.110 (talk) 01:13, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

I'd like to nominate that the article be replaced with the 11 word version as it is even more buffaloey (37.5% more buffalo saturation) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.19.150.110 (talk) 01:16, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

As stated elsewhere, we use the example that is citable. Most of the references use the 8-buffalo example, hence we do. —Quiddity (talk) 19:02, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Beyond that, as the article points out, the sequence can be extended to any arbitrary number of repetitions, so there's no reason 11 is any more special than 8. Powers ^T 15:05, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

How about "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo[,] Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo[,] buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo"? Here we state that all of the buffaloes in question are named "Buffalo". And, although this is stretching it, if you were to use the word "buffalo" as an adjective ("mean/meanie"), you could end up with "buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo[,] buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo[,] buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo". --GreatEmerald (talk) 07:13, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Marklar

The "other words" section of this page lists some examples of words that can be used to construct similar sentences. I've removed the word "marklar" twice now, partly because it's a nonsense word made up by South Park, and partly because it doesn't even work; according the article that marklar redirects to, it can only be used as a noun. Anyway, removing "marklar" drew my attention to the other words listed, and I think a lot of them are likely to confuse the average reader. They confused me, at any rate. I'll go through them.

• police and dice are both fine. "Police police police..." and "dice dice dice..." make sense.
• people, I'm not sure about. "People people people..." might make grammatical sense, but it's semantically nonsensical. People can't be peopled. Okay, the article does say that these sentences aren't necessarily meaningful, but that means we're veering away from the "buffalo buffalo" concept. I'd rather stick to examples that are meaningful (and preferably that have the same triple meaning as buffalo, but I can't think of anything that does).
• perch kind of works, I guess. You have to think about it, though.
• smelt and char are species of fish. I didn't know that until I looked it up. I doubt the average person would know that, either.
• bream is similarly obscure. It's a nautical term that means "to clean by the application of fire or scraping". Is the average reader expected to be aware of this?

Basically, I think if these words are going to be used as examples, we'll have to clearly define them and go into greater detail about why they work. Alternatively, just cut the list back to police and dice. They're the only two that are simple and intuitive, that we can reasonably expect people to grasp without any further explanation. Any thoughts? DoctorKubla (talk) 07:49, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for reverting that stuff, which looks like vandalism to me. You are right, there are many irregular plurals that are also transitive verbs, and the authors of this citation have used a computer program to find many more that could fulfill these critrea, whic is all that is necessary to create more such grammatically identical sentences. However, our reader is likely to notice, as you have, that bison do actually bully others of their kind, so the sentence is logical for not only grammatical but also semantic reasons, not something you might be able to say about "dice dice dice". The best of these by far to my mind is "Police police police" because it's not only grammatical but also true. Furthermore, as "police" is commonly used as a verb and "buffalo" far less commonly, "Police police police" is even better than "Buffalo buffalo buffalo". However, it's easier to image what Buffalo buffalo would be, as they have a zoo there, is the noun phrase "police police" sufficently evokative of the department of internal affairs? If so the fact that "police police police police" is clearly true and understood. Chrisrus (talk) 16:10, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, looks fishy to me... violet/riga _^[talk] 17:57, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

The other terms seem to be sourced back to this everything2 page by user:oolong who has commented above. I support violetriga's removals of those other words, based on WP:OR. Any 'other words' should really be sourced to a WP:RS. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:51, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Searching google scholar for "buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo" leads to these papers:

• Computational consequences of agreement and ambiguity in natural language (PDF) page 12-15, which mentions "police" and "french"
• When is information explicitly represented (PDF) page 355 concentrates on "police", and cites the above paper.

And whilst I'm looking, these other refs could be added to our article:

• Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter; Fogelin, Robert J. (2010). Understanding arguments : an introduction to informal logic. Australia ; Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. p. 20. ISBN 978-0-495-60395-5.
• Forsyth, Mark. (2011). The etymologicon : a circular stroll through the hidden connections of the English language. London: Icon Books. ISBN 978-1-84831-307-1. - covers the Latin "Malo malo malo malo" and says "Rhetorically, the sentence Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo bufallo Buffalo buffalo is antanaclasic, which means that it keep using the same word in different sense. People have been playing around with antanaclasis since language began."

HTH. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:51, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Lest there be some confusion, the suspected vandalism that was reverted was the stuff about Marklar and such. No one is questioning the WP:RSes cited claims above. By the way, let's see what happens when I type the word "antanaclasis" in brackets. Oooo it turned blue! Lemmie read it.... Chrisrus (talk) 23:48, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

If you would, everyone please do go see what I did to the article antanaclasis tonight and see what you can do with it. Chrisrus (talk) 00:19, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Fish

I'd recently attempted to make some additions to this page under the section 'Other Words' in order to show how other words can be used in the same type of sentence construction, and to provide one simple example using the word 'fish'. The general point is that any word that can serve as both a common noun and a transitive verb will do the trick: any such word can be repeated any number of times consecutively and the result after however many iterations will always be a grammatical (if perhaps very difficult to parse) English sentence. This point depends on a couple of facts about English: one point is that you can use a transitive verb in the imperative mood; the second and really crucial point is that in English there's a noun phrase formation rule that lets you to take any common or quantified noun phrase, add any other noun phrase and a verb phrase, and the result is itself a noun phrase. Here are some examples of this second point:

• A man my sister envies
• Many Americans Russians most admire
• The girl Sam will marry

And notice that since these expressions themselves are noun phrases, they can in turn occupy the 2nd position in further applications of the same formation rule. In other words, the rule can be applied recursively:

• The woman a man my sister envies hired
• The region of the U.S. many Americans Russians most admire have come from
• The rock band the girl Sam will marry likes the most

These are all grammatically correct noun phrases and can be used as the subjects of sentences in English:

• The woman a man my sister envies hired will become his supervisor next week.
• The region of the U.S. many Americans Russians most admire have come from is the Pacific Northwest.
• The rock band the girl Sam will marry likes the most is playing tonight at the Civic Center.

The claim is not that these sentences are pleasant to read, or easy to understand. It is not being claimed that they are sentences that would be good to use in any common written context. But they are grammatical and have a meaning, all the same.

So then consider the word 'fish'. It's one of several words in English that are--with one and the same spelling--both noun and transitive verb; the examples given above under the section titled Marklar all work, as does the word 'steer'.

Since 'fish' is a verb, you can construct a sentence with the word by itself. That's the case with 1 iteration. What follows are the sentences you get with 1 through 6 iterations:

1. Fish. (imperative: "Do some fishing")
2. Fish fish. (two readings: a) imperative: "Do some fishing for fish"; b) indicative: "Fish tend to fish")
3. Fish fish fish. (indicative: "Fish tend to fish for fish")
4. Fish fish fish fish. (two readings: a) imperative: "Do some fishing for the fish that fish tend to fish"; b) indicative: "The fish that fish tend to fish themselves tend to fish")

This last example relies on the noun phrase formation rule noted above: Since 'fish' is both a common noun and verb, you can use 'fish fish fish' as a noun phrase meaning "the fish that fish tend to fish". And since 'fish' is a transitive verb, you can apply this noun phrase as subject or object of the transitive verb, 'fish', and with either choice, you get the following 5-word sentence:

5. Fish fish fish fish fish.

The sentence is ambiguous depending on whether the noun phrase, 'fish fish fish' is taken to be the subject or the object. Now consider the point about applying the formation rule recursively. If you use 'fish' as the first noun phrase, 'fish fish fish' as the second noun phrase, and use 'fish' as the verb phrase, then you get the following five-word noun phrase: 'fish fish fish fish fish'. It has the reading: "The fish that the fish that fish tend to fish tend to fish". And since this is a noun phrase, you can use it as either subject or object of the verb, 'fish', and what you get is a six-word sentence:

6. Fish fish fish fish fish fish.

Again, this is ambiguous and the reading depends on whether the 5-word noun phrase is taken to be subject or object. If subject, then the 6-word sentence is an indicative. If object, then the 6-word sentence is an imperative (telling you which kind of fish to fish).

In general, for any n, n consecutive repetitions of 'fish' will be a grammatical sentence of English.

I'd like some discussion of this general point. I'd tried to lay it out briefly in the "Other Words" section of the Buffalo page, but it was reverted by DoctorKubla. I don't think I got a fair shake. DoctorKubla recommended that I bring the issue up on this talk page before seeking to reintroduce what I'd written. So here you go. Thanks, Anamaeka (talk) 00:34, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Hi. Here's the diff of your edit, for reference.

The main problem isn't one of accuracy, it's a problem of WP:No original research (one of Wikipedia's most important policies. Read the "nutshell" and intro section of that policy, to get a clear idea about what it means). So, if you can find a WP:Reliable source that analyses the "fish" example, then we could include it here (or anywhere appropriate).

See the thread above, for further examples, where we've found citations for some of the "other words" currently included in the article.

Hope that helps. -- Quiddity (talk) 05:54, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Alright, thanks Quiddity ("This-ness", nice). I'm going to assume that the main thing that ought to be referenced is the formation rule for noun phrases that I mentioned above. If I can get a reference for that, I'll resubmit. The bulk of what I have to say would then just be an application of the referenced rule to the case of a word, like 'fish' or 'buffalo', that serves both as a plural noun phrase as well as a transitive verb. If there are any other matters in what I've said above that you think call for referencing, besides the formation rule in question, please let me know.

Thanks; 67.171.37.250 (talk) 02:50, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't want to be difficult, but I think a lengthy digression into fish would require a reliable source that not only details the "fish" example but specifically links it to the "buffalo" sentence. And besides that, I don't think "fish" really works. If I were fishing for fish, I wouldn't say that I was "fishing fish". To me, that doesn't make sense without the "for". Fish might fish for fish, but they don't "fish fish". DoctorKubla (talk) 18:01, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

First-order logic

What is the relevance of the "translation into first-order logic"? Does it enhance the article somehow? Oli Filth^{(talk|contribs)} 20:22, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Removed now. Oli Filth^{(talk|contribs)} 21:15, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Consider the following

People who edit wikipedia are fucking retarded. 174.134.156.86 (talk) 21:20, 6 October 2012 (UTC)