Talk:Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

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This page was previously nominated for deletion. Please see prior discussion(s) before considering re-nomination: Speedy keep, AFD 17 September 2006 Speedy deletion nomination retracted, 20 September 2006 Speedy keep, AFD 9 October 2006

An entry from Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 17 September 2006. There were over 150 edits made to the article while it was there.

The spoken word version of this article is part of WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia, an attempt to produce recordings of Wikipedia articles. To participate, visit the project page.

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo was featured in a WikiWorld cartoon: (click image to the right for full size version.)

This page has been cited as a source by a media organization. The citation is in: Andrew Swerlick. "What a Herd of Confused Bison from Upstate New York Can Teach Us About Our Difficulties With the English Language", The Emory Wheel, 2/5/2008. (details)

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/Archive 1

Contents 1 cool latin example 2 ... 3 Are the images of the bison and the city really nessecary? 4 just a little thought 5 Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo (11 buffaloes) 6 Incorrect definition? 7 Buffalon? 8 Related subject - for this, or for the other examples page? 9 Protecting the page? 10 The 'translated' examples 11 i dont get it 12 Punctuation? 13 Commas in explanation 14 Other words 15 Parse tree 16 Why is "who" not needed? 17 Excellent image 18 Encyclopedia topic? 19 Another way to visualize this, perhaps? 20 minor error

[edit] cool latin example

Barbara barbaribus barbarant barbara barbis.--Ioshus ^(talk) 04:31, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

What does that say? I have a limited Latin vocabulary, and my dictionary's in another state. Millancad 05:58, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

something about a beard?

[edit] ...

So this is what those people who majored in English are doing with their time. XM 16:21, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Are the images of the bison and the city really nessecary?

Do they add anything to the article? Or for that matter, would there be any point to removing them? Nyeguy 01:03, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

I believe that the images should stay. Nikola 10:22, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

So do I. They serve a useful purpose: as the article acknowledges, the meaning of the sentence is very opaque, and a couple of illustrations help fix the different meanings of "buffalo" in the reader's mind. (It's a shame the third meaning of the word, which is the least common, doesn't really lend itself to illustration.) I actually think it would be better to put the illustrations back where they used to be: the photos at the top, as an eye-catching and easy-to-understand illustration of the lead section, and the parse tree alongside the "Sentence construction" section where it would be better placed to explain the complex syntax. --Blisco 19:50, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the previous placement of the pictures was better. —johndburger 00:49, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

I have removed them because they are not relevant to what the article is about. By all means link to the articles on the animal and the city, but do not depict them on a page about pure linguistics. It would be just as silly to have a picture of a real bird in an article about Bird's Custard Powder. 86.131.102.112 23:33, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

As you can see, the consensus (albeit weak) appears to be to keep them, so I reverted. I also moved your comment to be in temporal order, a widely-used convention in on-line discussions. —johndburger 01:52, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] just a little thought

I was just wondering - is sentence "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo Bill" gramatically correct too? It should be! --Have a nice day. Running 22:50, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Seems like it. -kotra 21:03, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo (11 buffaloes)

"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo" can translate to: [The] buffalo from Buffalo, New York [that other] buffalo from Buffalo, New York bully [, themselves] bully Buffalo from Buffalo, New York [that] buffalo from Buffalo, Minnesota (or many other states) bully. Why isn't something like this included? If, in the original 8-word sentence, "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo" is correct then "Buffalo buffalo buffalo" can also be applied to the last two words, "Buffalo buffalo," at the end of the sentence.

There is a buffalo gang in Buffalo, Minnesota who bully buffalo gang A in Buffalo, New York. Buffalo gang A in New York are bullied by buffalo gang B in New York, who are bullied by buffalo gang C from New York.

Using arrows to depict who bullies who: Buffalo gang C --> buffalo gang B (the subject of the sentence, represented by the opening "Buffalo buffalo") --> buffalo gang C <-- buffalo gang from Buffalo, Minnesota.

This seems correct. Anyone agree? Can this be mentioned on the article?—oac old american century ^talk @ 19:14, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Please read carefully, it's already in there. —johndburger 01:18, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

10-4. Roger n' out.—oac old american century ^talk @ 02:16, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Incorrect definition?

The verb form of "buffalo" is repeatedly said to mean "bully" in this article. I think that's incorrect. Merriam Webster claims buffalo means bewilder, baffle, bamboozle, and I've only heard it used in that sense until now. Can anyone produce a definition from the OED or other reliable source supporting the "bully" claim? If not, let's replace "bully" with "cheat" or "baffle." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cheesebikini (talk • contribs) 11:45, 21 June 2007

According to the online version of the OED (I've only got access through my university, so I can't post a direct link), buffalo as a verb means "to overpower, overawe, or constrain by superior force or influence," which can essentially be taken to mean "bully." It does also mean to outwit or perplex, but the bully part is still in there. --clpo13 09:17, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

The American Heritage Dictionary also defines buffalo as "to intimidate, as by a display of confidence or authority" along with "to confuse; bewilder" and "to decieve; hoodwink." Applejaxs 16:23, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Another way of thinking about it's meaning might be "to bullshit" -- as in the way a used car salesman gets you to buy a car: part show, part lies, part pressure. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.141.111.201 (talk) 08:12, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Buffaloⁿ?

The conclusion of the article states that a set of all sentences of the type buffaloⁿ where n≥1 are grammatically sound. Is this correct? I can see how this works up to n=8. What happens at 9? Or 14? It seems like there's an upper bound on the recursion. The sentence seems to become meaningless if one continues to insert 'Buffalo buffalo buffalo' (that Buffalo bison bully). Wouldn't this be equivalent to a sentence structure like "Japanese people who Japanese people favor (who Japanese people favor, . . . ad infinitum) VP." The sentence seems to lose its sense once the second relative phrase is inserted? Even if this type of construction is allowed, how do I parse 9 iterations. If 8 iterations brackets like this: [[[Buffalo_adj][buffalo_n]]_NP[Buffalo_a[buffalo_n[buffalo_v]]_RP][[buffalo_v][[Buffalo_adj][buffalo_n]_NP]_VP]_S]

What can be done with the ninth? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Joshua Crowgey (talk • contribs) 11:33, 24 July 2007

When you move into the higher number of numbers of buffalos, you basically just start describing a pecking order in the process of describing the subject of the sentence (i.e., the buffalo that is doing the bullying). You say something along the lines of, "the bison from New York that bison from New York that bison from New York intimidate intimidate intimidate bison from New York." In fact, I believe it says so much in the article. At a certain level (maybe 9), it becomes hard for most people to parse but it is grammatical. But then again, those qualities are sort of the point of the sentence in the first place. —mako๛ 14:24, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I added this to the end of the article; it can easily be done with quotes.

Heshy613 13:05, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

It's really a theoretical claim, introduced by Chomsky, that the sentences are grammatical for higher n. (Of course, he wasn't talking about this sentence in particular, but about recursive syntactic procedures in general.) How do we know that the Buffalo sentence is grammatical with n = 10 trillion? In fact center embedding starts to become unparseable after only a few repetitions. Chomskyan grammarians hold that this is most parsimoniously handled by calling it a limitation of the brain rather than a fact about the grammar. Zompist 21:02, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

WHY? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 76.190.155.120 (talk) 16:36, August 23, 2007 (UTC)

Heshy613's quotes are unnecessary, and appear to be original research, so I removed the example. You can just keep adding clauses after 'buffalo' (the common noun), and swapping words out elsewhere. Some ways buffalo^n works after n = 9 is - I'm using the 'synonyms' NY, bison and bully to illustrate:

9. (NY bison [which] bison bully) bully (bison [which] NY bison bully)
10. (Bison) bully (NY bison [which] NY bison (NY bison bully) bully)
11. (NY Bison) bully (NY bison [which] NY bison ([which] NY bison bully) bully)
12. (bison [which] bison ([which] NY bison bully) bully) bully (NY bison [which] NY bison bully)

Robin Johnson (talk) 13:17, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, in a mathematical sense it's quite easy to prove that the sentence works for all Buffaloⁿ where n is an element of positive integers. You can do it recursively, given that it works for n=1, n=2, and n=3, and you have recursion rules allowing you to add 1 in some cases, add 2 (and perhaps subtract one) in others, so in all cases of Buffaloⁿ it's possible to add 1 to n by either of the two rules. The only assumptions you need are not Chomskyan grammar, but simple math and grammar rules and the Well Ordered Axiom.Eebster the Great (talk) 20:55, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Related subject - for this, or for the other examples page?

Seems worth a mention here or there - the old "Sarah where Jane had had had had had had had had had had had the professor's approval." Not sure if the need for punctuation there makes it quite different or what, but... anyhow, put me in mind of that. 142.167.166.222 05:27, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

The examples with unwieldy repetitive hads had been listed under the recently deleted List of homophonous phrases. There were things like John, when playing a game of Scrabble against Dick who, whilst pondering the degree of legitimacy the last word that Harry (who had had 'had') had had had had, had had 'had', had had 'had'. Had 'had' had more letters, he would have played it again. I am sure they deserve their own page, given enough references. --Cubbi 10:37, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Why has the article "List of homophonous phrases" been removed??? There is an old version in archive.org where you can see the previous version of the article before been erased (http://web.archive.org/web/20070203154053/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_homophonous_phrases - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_homophonous_phrases) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.223.150.55 (talk) 23:29, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

[Adjusting indents.] See discussion here: WP:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_homophonous_phrases. —johndburger 03:50, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Protecting the page?

I believe it would be necessary at least temporarily, because the last 20 edits have been vandalism and reversion. • Ekevu • ♥ • ★ 14:47, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, it isn't a huge target; it can be easily managed by people who watch this page. So I don't see a real need for a semi protect. i ^said 22:47, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The 'translated' examples

There are too many, it makes the article read clumsily. I suggest we get rid of all of them, except the Buffalo bison bully one, since it is the clearest.--poorsod^talk 10:26, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree—go ahead, be bold. —johndburger 02:49, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

I love this article. I agree also, but I think it's important to keep one 'translation' as a semantically similar and sytactically equivalent which is easier to parse has great explicative value. J Crow 07:19, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] i dont get it

i thought i did but New York bison New York bison bully bully New York bison doesn't seem to make sense to me. bah im just an idiot.

"New York bison[,] [that] New York bison bully[,] bully New York bison." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.1.161.115 (talk) 07:46, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Think about it in another context: Tasty animals Big John likes to eat fight Big John. Here it is clear that the subject is "tasty animals," the main verb "fight," and the object "Big John." The phrase "Big John likes to eat" is a category of tasty animals, to distinguish these tasty animals from, say, tasty animals he doesn't like to eat.

In the case of the buffalo, the particular NY bison who bully other NY bison are the ones whom other NY bison bully. It does get rather confusing when you have so many different NY bison (or in the actual sentence, Buffalo buffalo) to keep track of.Eebster the Great (talk) 21:04, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Punctuation?

Shouldn't there be a few commas, even if it is just to read better? & And isn't Bufallo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffallo Buffalo buffalo[ing] buffalo [from] Buffalo? microchip08 15:59, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand your question. In terms of commas, technically the absence of commas is correct, since the relative clause (albeit, with the relative pronoun "whom" assumed) is essential in this sentence. Not all buffalo get buffaloed by other buffalo, just these particular ones. Besides, adding in commas is contradictory the point, which is to create a sentence which is just an infinite recursion of "buffalo" (in fact, I prefer to construct the sentence using the adjective "buffalo" meaning "cunning," so there isn't even capitalization to give clues). Of course, with too many buffaloes it's nearly impossible to actually parse or understand the sentence, but that doesn't mean it isn't gramatically correct. Also, "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" is a correct sentence if taken to mean "NY bison [whom] NY bison indimidate indimidate cunning NY buffalo."Eebster the Great (talk) 21:11, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Commas in explanation

Josephgrossberg just added some commas, in this revision. But I don't agree with it. The previous version, without commas:

Buffalo bison whom other Buffalo bison bully themselves bully Buffalo bison

This says that the specific Buffalo bison are bullied by other Buffalo bison themselves bully Buffalo bison

But to my mind the changed version:

Buffalo bison, whom other Buffalo bison bully, themselves bully Buffalo bison

Means that Buffalo bison in general (which, by the way, are all bullied by other Buffalo bison) bully Buffalo bison. In order for the original sentence to mean this, I think it would need at least a that/which/whom and some punctuation.

So I'm going to change it back, but of course if Josephgrossberg or anyone else disagrees with my analysis they can explain why and change it back, I would prefer to start a discussion than an edit war. --Angelastic 00:05, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

It needs no commas—in fact they would be ungrammatical. —johndburger 02:30, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

The commas would not be ungrammatical, but merely would mean something different, like Angelastic said. Your sentence, however, is ungrammatical, as there should be a comma after "in fact." I wonder, though, are smily faces ungrammatical? :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eebster the Great (talk • contribs) 21:14, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Other words

It might be worth noting that there are other words in English for which this kind of sentence can be constructed. Any word which is both a plural noun and a plural form of a transitive verb will do. Examples include fish, smelt, bream (vt. to clean e.g. a ship's bottom by burning off seaweed, shells etc), and cod (vt. to hoax; to poke fun at). Gdr 23:17, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Not so. The word also must be useable to modify a noun, as a quasi-adjective. That's why the city of Buffalo is involved: "Buffalo buffalo" means 'bison in the city of Buffalo'. But what are "cod cod"? None of these words fit that requirement, and I'm removing the section.

Furthermore,

• the verb "fish" doesn't take a direct object. "*He's fishing cod" is ungrammatical (that's what the asterisk means); it needs a :preposition: "He's fishing for cod".
• "dice" (used in the section, not mentioned by Gdr) won't work well because dice are inanimate and can't do things like :dicing (chopping up) other dice
• I don't know where you found the verb "cod". Merriam-Webster doesn't have it, and the OED lists only one verb sense, obsolete and not useable with the noun "cod".

All the senses have to be fairly familiar or the example fails to teach, because the hearer/reader will often react "That's not English at all; I've never even heard of that word/meaning!".

Thnidu (talk) 12:46, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, you could build less impressive sentences with two meanings. You don't really need an adjective, noun, and a verb; you just need a noun and a verb. So "Smelt smelt smelt", "Smelt {smelt smelt} smelt smelt", and so on. Though even that construction wouldn't work very well for those others. Soap ^Talk/_{Contributions} 18:51, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

'Smelt', 'bream', and 'buffalo' are uncotroversially both plural nouns and transitive verbs, so this recursion works for them. 'Cod' is clearly a plural noun, and WordNet lists it as a transitive verb as well, although I don't see that anywhere else. You say 'fish' is only intransitive, but this is clearly wrong, as dictionary.com gives it five transitive definitions; American Heritage, two; Websters, four. However, in the case of 'smelt', the sentence "smelt smelt smelt" makes absolutely no sense, although technically grammatically correct.Eebster the Great (talk) 03:30, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

[Removed from article]

For n = 0, this could be argued to be a valid garden path sentence if one's definition of 'sentence' allowed "" as a valid construction. Rational sentences, however, generally include at least one word and thus n = 0 is excluded from the preceding argument.

Similar sentences can be constructed using any words which have identical forms for the plural noun and the plural form of the transitive verb. Some such words are fish, smelt, bream, and cod. Any such words can also be arbitrarily mixed with any other such words to form grammatical sentences, such as "Buffalo fish fish smelt buffalo bream buffalo smelt bream cod bream cod fish."

I removed these bits, unless there are references in the literature for these points, they would seem to constitute original research, if there are references it could go back in, but doesn't seem particularly relevant. --Newbyguesses (talk) 03:49, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I would certainly consider them relevant, but I agree that there should be a reference. I could gramatically explain the second paragraph, but that might be considered OR.Eebster the Great (talk) 22:19, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Parse tree

I am perhaps biased, but isn't the parse tree a bit too small to be useful? —johndburger 02:35, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why is "who" not needed?

I'm being dense, but why is a "who" not needed to make this sentence grammatically correct? That is, I can see why "Buffalo buffalo, who Buffalo buffalo buffalo, buffalo Buffalo buffalo" is grammatically correct, but I can't understand why it's correct without the "who". — Matt Crypto 08:19, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

"The phones people use", "the eggs I bought". You don't need the 'which' there, and you don't need 'who' in the buffalo sentence. (And if you did, it would be whom, or which.) Robin Johnson (talk) 10:29, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Ah yes, that make sense, thanks. (I'm a bit underconvinced for the need for whom for modern English, but that's a whole other world of off-topic.) — Matt Crypto 19:11, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Linguists call it a reduced relative clause—the relative clause article discusses it, though not with that term. —johndburger 01:09, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

There's no "who" or "which" needed, because a relative clause is formed. Relative clauses are used a lot. -- Darx21 (talk) 09:10, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Excellent image

The image at the top, "Image:Buffalo sentence 1 parse tree.svg", really did a good job of clearing up how to read the sentence. I admit I had problems with grasping the first half of the sentence, but it put it in a way that's easy to get (clarifying the tough first five and making the whole sentence make sense). --Bobak (talk) 16:15, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Gee thanks :). King of Hearts turned it into an SVG. If there are other linguistic constructions that are difficult to understand, let me know and I can make similar graphics. —johndburger 01:31, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Encyclopedia topic?

Amusing but is a specific example of a general linguistic oddity really a suitable encyclopedia topic? As the article states any number of similar sentences can be formed. Makes as much sense to me as an article on "Have you stopped beating your wife?" which btw redirects to a general topic. Gr8white (talk) 19:13, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

It's a frequently discussed example in linguistics. See the references, as well as the previous AFDs. —johndburger 01:01, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Totally ridiculous. How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? I see that redirects to woodchuck...maybe I should write the article :^) (and yes, I read the references etc., still not convinced.) Gr8white (talk) 03:57, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

What do you believe merits an encyclopedia topic? Creating pages like this is cost free and interesting, and doesn't take any space another article ought to use (it's safe to say that anybody typing in "buffalo" that many times does not expect an ordinary article about buffalo). This page also serves as a means of explaining a sentence complex and interesting enough to require quite a bit of explanation, which in wikipedian terms merits a separate article. In most cases it would be something like "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo (linguistics)," but again I think it's safe to say that this name will not conflict with another article. Also bear in mind that ALL encyclopedia articles in fact are specific examples of something more general, and that including more information is never bad when it doesn't take away from anything else. Besides, look at how many people have posted here--it's not like it's entirely unheard of and should be up for deletion.Eebster the Great (talk) 21:21, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Another way to visualize this, perhaps?

I have no idea if such a visualization concept is accepted in linguistic circles or not, so this is likely just WP:OR, but I found that one way of visualizing the structure of complex sentences is to group portions together. For instance:

'[[Buffalo bison] [Buffalo bison bully]] bully [Buffalo bison]'

('[[Buffalo bison] (that) [Buffalo bison bully]] bully [Buffalo bison]')

This method helps me to understand how the concepts made by words 1-2 and 3-5 make up a singular concept, and that words 7-8 are another singular concept related to the first one. So, would anything like this have a place in the article? — KieferSkunk (talk) — 22:48, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] minor error

"Buffalo^c buffalo^a Buffalo^c buffalo^a buffalo^v buffalo^v Buffalo^c buffalo^a Buffalo^c buffalo^a buffalo^v"
should be:
Buffalo^c buffalo^a Buffalo^c buffalo^a buffalo^v buffalo^v Buffalo^c buffalo^a buffalo^v Buffalo^c buffalo^a —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.169.169.58 (talk) 21:21, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Not so, look at the parse tree to understand where the verbs are—"extended sentence" has same subject and object. —johndburger 02:10, 28 March 2008 (UTC)