The Czech ambiguity one with 5 words giving 7+ sentence meanings (raising to 58 possible meanings when allowing same syllables but a single word merge) is mind boggling.
I also quite like this punctuation-based one:
Dear John:
I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we’re apart. I can be forever happy–will you let me be yours?
Jane
vs
Dear John,
I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we’re apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?
Yours,
Jane
These examples provide a nice illustration how human language evolution optimizes for most common use cases and basically ignores the worst case scenarios.
Quite a bit different from formal languages where even rare worst cases get a lot of attention (or rather they are designed in a way to avoid worst case scenarios at the cost of making the typical scenarios less efficient).
DEAR JOHN I WANT A MAN WHO KNOWS WHAT LOVE IS ALL ABOUT YOU ARE GENEROUS KIND THOUGHTFUL PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT LIKE YOU ADMIT TO BEING USELESS AND INFERIOR YOU HAVE RUINED ME FOR OTHER MEN I YEARN FOR YOU I HAVE NO FEELINGS WHATSOEVER WHEN WERE APART I CAN BE FOREVER HAPPY WILL YOU LET ME BE YOURS JANE
I think the simplest repeating word sentence is using "police". It isn't as impressive since it only employs two meanings rather than three but is much easier to grasp.
Who polices police? Police police.
Police police police police.
But then who polices police police? Police police police.
Police police police police police police.
"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?"
- Martin Gardner
The passage "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?" would sprawl across the page if newlines were placed between the and words, and words and Fish, and Fish and and, and and and between, and between and Fish, and Fish and and, and and and and, and and and and, and and and and, and and and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and and, and and and and, and and and and, and and and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And 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.
"James had had had had John had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher"
With added commas, to aid parsing:
"James had had had had, John had had had - had had had had a better effect on the teacher."
The context being a hypothetical sentence in which either "had" or "had had" were valid constructions. "Had had" was the formulation which the teacher liked best.
It really boggles the brain to see that many repetitions, but I find it easier to parse/explain than the Buffalo one.
James, while John had had "had had" had had "had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had". "had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had" had had a worse effect on John's computer program because the string buffer wasn't large enough.
In the context of two users putting inputs into a C program that doesn't sanitize user input.
Two strings walk into a bar and sit down. The bartender says, “So what’ll it be?”
The first string says, “I think I’ll have a beer quag fulk boorg jdk^CjfdLk jk3s d#f67howe%^U r89nvy~~owmc63^Dz x.xvcu”
“Please excuse my friend,” the second string says, “He isn’t null-terminated.”
You're right - mine was from memory, but this is closer to the original formulation - it's supposed to have been "James while John had had had had ... "
> Thomas Tymoczko has pointed out that there is nothing special about eight "buffalos";[2] any sentence consisting solely of the word "buffalo" repeated any number of times is grammatically correct.
My favorite part of this. Repeated 10 times, for instance, could mean "NY bison NY bison bully bully bison NY bison bully." (The New York bison who are bullied by other NY bison, well they themselves bully some bison whom other NY bison bully.) Any number of times unfurls out of, like, kind of a context-free grammar replacement scheme from a base case:
"bully bison" -> base case
"* bison *" -> "* bison bison bully *"
"* bison *" -> "* NY bison *"
"Kuusi palaa" has at least six different meanings: 1) your moon is burning, 2) pruce tree is burning, 3) number six is burning, 4) a part of something is burning, 5) pruce tree returns, and 6) your moon returns.
"Kokoa kokoon koko kokko!"
"Koko kokko kokoonko?"
"Koko kokko kokoon!"
Which translates to a conversation between two parties on the building of a bonfire.
It's worth noting that pitch accent matters: LHHLHLLHHHHLH (L: low, H: high, for each mora). It becomes even more important if you remove one set of "niwa", because then you can have two different meanings:
"there are two birds in the garden" (depending on the pitch accent, the order of the words can be different)
I still find the first noun phrase and relative clause (first 5 buffalo words, Buffalonian bison that Buffalonian bison bully) to be just unparsable. If you switch up the nouns it’s slightly easier to grok:
Vancouver birds Toronto bison bully
But the missing “that” connector in between the two just doesn’t parse in my brain no matter how many times as I read it.
I'm with you. I understand how it's _meant_ to work, but that's just not how language works in my head. Without `that`, it's just not a sentence to me.
(Yadda yadda, prescriptivism is flawed, etc. Note my "in my head" and "to me" caveats above)
But can you parse a sentence like this one?
"The train your uncle just missed"
I think it's the same structure. We are just so used to add "that" or "which", but I think with a bit of practice one could omit these filler words and read the sentence just fine. Although I do think that in the Buffalo case it makes it very ambiguous.
The first issue is the threefold homnym, while the second is the use of a reduced relative clause - i.e. one that is not marked by an explicit relative pronoun or complementizer such as who, which or that [1]. Furthermore, the relative clause here is a restrictive one, so there can be no commas [2].
Reduced relative clauses are OK for conversation, but I tend to limit their use to only the simplest cases when I am writing. Leaving in the initial relative pronoun or complementizer is usually straightforward, but it is sometimes difficult to phrase a sentence so that the end of a restrictive clause is clear.
My favourite one of these is “That that is is that that is not is not is that it it is”, which can take on a few meanings depending on how you distribute the punctuation.
My favourite punctuated form is “That that is, is. That that is not, is not. Is that it? It is.”.
It is rarely noted that this sentence only works in American English, where "Buffalo" (with a capital B) is also a place, and "buffalo" (with a minuscule b) is a verb.
Neither of these is true in standard British English or any other regional form, AFAIK.
Ah, love this one. I remember the first time I heard of it several years ago. I actually thought about it earlier today, when a few of my uni classmates mentioned to the prof that they were from Buffalo. Didn't speak up and say the monstrous sentence, but maybe I should have. lol
Heard about it for the first time today and already feeling a strange satisfaction: "well if that's what they do, so much that they've become namesake to a verb, then that's very well what they deserve!" Justice at last!
Closest thing I know in German is unexpected in a very different way: "Mähen Äbte? Äbte mähen nie, Äbte beten“ is perfectly clear in the written, but when spoken the words are drawn together more than usual and without context that you might be talking about abbots or mowing, most people will insist that the utterance can't possibly be German at all.
In 4th grade, during religious study we had to work in small groups and write a dialogue for a scene from the bible. My group had the scene when the Arche rans aground as the water sinks.
I wrote the sentence “Heißt das, daß das Schiff sinkt?”, meaning “does that mean the ship is sinking?”. Havin 3 “das(ß)” in a row went right over the head of my group mates. That was, apart from horrible (loud) reading speeds, one of the first times I really noticed differences in language expression between my classmates. We were all native speakers, mind you.
Reduced relative clauses should only be used when they do not compromise the clarity the sentence, which is not the case here. You can add a "that" or "which" or settle for only 5 "buffalo"
Nach dem stutzen des Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbarenbarts geht der Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbarenbartbarbier meist mit den Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbaren in die Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbarenbartbarbierbierbar zu Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbarenbartbarbierbierbarbärbel
um sie mit zur Rhabarberbarbarabar zu nehmen um mit etwas Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbarenbartbarbierbier von Rhabarberbarbaras herrlichem Rhabarberkuchen zu essen.
Am I the only one who just doesn't find this very interesting? I mean it's just a coincidence that "buffalo" is a verb in American English and also a place name, as well as an animal.
I just don't think this leads anywhere interesting.
For somebody with a Cognitive Science degree like myself, the interesting place it leads is that it is a grammatically correct sentence which almost every native speaker who is unfamiliar with will claim is not. Why? If we can reason out that it is grammatically correct, but our built in grammar parser will evaluate it as incorrect, what is it we don't understand about the way our brain processes linguistic information?
So if someone came up to you in at a party or any other social environment and said "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" and then walked off, your interest wouldn't be piqued?
No, not really. People do all sorts of crap for all sorts of reasons. Some people are literally insane. Some people do things at your expense. Some people just like to amuse only themselves. And then throw drugs and alcohol in the mix, there isn't much reason to believe that people are always rational actors which have to be taken seriously.
- It shows “corner cases” in our own human languages where meaning is not clear even when a sentence is grammatically correct. (This possibility is perhaps more obvious to tech people, but a surprise to many)
- It shows how understanding a sentence is so different from reading. When, with some aid, one finally can read the buffalo sentence and understand it, it’s amazing to realize how it “clicks”. As technothrasher said, this is interesting to those understanding how the brain works.
- As others noted, reveals how much of human language is about defaults and convention, and NOT about parsing based in grammar. This was something that had to be learned; early thinkers sometimes assumed that the brain was just a parser.
- For hackers, it’s interesting to find ways to “break” a human language while playing by the rules (grammar).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguistic_example_sen...
The non-english examples section is fun too!
The Czech ambiguity one with 5 words giving 7+ sentence meanings (raising to 58 possible meanings when allowing same syllables but a single word merge) is mind boggling.
I also quite like this punctuation-based one:
vs