A book I own contains the following fully grammatical sentence:
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
My friend Susan was the only one who immediately asked, “Where’s the verb?” One of my students reacted the way I did when I first saw the sentence: “Why do you have 8 buffaloes in a row?”
Think equivocation and focus on the verb(s). The sentence follows the following pattern:
Dogs dogs bite bite dogs.
What’s the translation? How did you reach it? Did you get mad? Why or why not?
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“A book I own contains the following passage.”
The finite verbs in the above sentence are “(I) own” and “(A book) contains.” Two finite verbs means you have two clauses – what is the logical relationship between them?
“A book…contains the following passage.”
Which book?
Oh – “(the one that) I own.” This relative clause modifies the subject of the main clause.
You have a similar structure in the buffalo sentence.
I’ve been working on this for days, and I never want to see the damn word “buffalo” again. The very sound of it now makes my skin crawl. I also never knew it could be a verb.
The big question for me was whether the first Buffalo was a proper name or not. You can’t tell based on the capitalization, because it would be capitalized either way. I take it as the city.
So…
Buffalo buffalo (the buffalo who live in Buffalo)
[whom] Buffalo buffalo buffalo
buffalo (main verb)
Buffalo buffalo. (Direct object.)
I.e.: Buffalo who live in Buffalo, whom buffalo living in Buffalo buffalo, buffalo buffalo who live in Buffalo.
And if that makes no sense, don’t buffalo me about it.
You did the buffalo the buffalo into a submission hold!
Hmm, riddles (linguistic or otherwise) another one of those things that are supposed to be fun but feel like work to me….luckily I’m comfortable being lazy.