Linguistic Obsession

"Want to see smoke come out of my ears, just show me a misplaced apostrophe or an improperly used transitive verb." I didn't write that, but I'll be nice and not edit the wonky use of commas by my generous host.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Diagramming buffalo

"'Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo,' is a grammatically correct sentence used as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated constructs. It has been known to exist since 1972 when the sentence was used by William J. Rapaport, currently an associate professor at the University at Buffalo.[1] It was posted to Linguist List by Rapaport in 1992.[2] It was also featured in Steven Pinker's 1994 book The Language Instinct. Sentences of this type, although not in such a refined form, have been known for a long time. A classic example is the proverb 'Don't trouble trouble until trouble troubles you'."

See Wikipedia for a full explanation.

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