Buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo
Dear reader, I know what you鈥檙e thinking, but it鈥檚 not true. The typesetter has not run amok.聽
The headline is designed to get your attention as an illustration of the glorious flexibility of the English language.
The fullest version of the I have in mind is too long for the space: 鈥淏uffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.鈥澛�
Original authorship is claimed by William J. Rapaport, associate professor emeritus of computer science at 鈥� where else? 鈥� the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.
As the professor recounts, the creation of this wonderful bit of prose began in 1972, when, as a graduate student in a course on the philosophy of language, he was told that the following was a grammatical sentence: 鈥淒ogs dogs dog dog dogs.鈥�
To unpack that a bit 鈥� 鈥淭he kind of dogs that other dogs dog (or pester, or hound, we might say) themselves dog (or pester or bother) other dogs.鈥�
Well, of course. It makes perfect sense 鈥� in a language that often dispenses with relative pronouns (鈥渄ogs that other dogs dog鈥�) and flips verbs into nouns and nouns into verbs as swiftly as a circus juggler sends his clubs into orbit.
But, as Rapaport relates on his Web , 鈥淪everal of us students found the plural 鈥榮鈥� endings to lack a certain aesthetic simplicity, and we searched for a better word.鈥�
This led him to 鈥淏uffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo.鈥� This one has the same syntax as the 鈥渄og鈥� sentence. But buffalo as a verb has a range of meanings: to bully, bamboozle, coerce, or confuse, to name a few. Thus: 鈥淭he kind of buffalo that other buffalo bully, or bamboozle, themselves bully or bamboozle other buffalo.鈥�
So far, we鈥檝e got a 鈥渂uffalo鈥� sentence using one word five times as two parts of speech 鈥� noun and verb. But 鈥淏uffalo鈥� can also be a proper noun. It鈥檚 the name of a couple dozen towns or cities across the United States, as well as in Canada, Australia, and South Africa. And a place name can be a modifier, or can serve as an adjective, in other words, as in 鈥淏uffalo wings鈥� or 鈥淣ew York strip steak.鈥� This leads us to the duplicative, but still theoretically possible, 鈥淏uffalo buffalo鈥� 鈥� bison that reside in Buffalo.
Since there is more than one place called 鈥淏uffalo,鈥� and we can imagine the buffalo of one Buffalo being more forceful, or coercive, or bamboozlesome, than those of another, we can get to 鈥淏uffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.鈥� And so like our juggler, tossing one more club into the air (how does he do it?) we add a third part of speech 鈥� adjective. (I鈥檓 figuring buffalo from Buffalo, N.Y., the biggest 鈥淏uffalo,鈥� are the ones doing the buffaloing.)
Steven Pinker, in his 1994 book, 鈥淭he Language Instinct,鈥� cited an eight-word 鈥渂uffalo鈥� sentence: 鈥淏uffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.鈥�
He parsed it thus: 鈥�(The) Buffalo buffalo [i.e., the buffalo who live in Buffalo] (that) [other] Buffalo buffalo (often) buffalo (in turn) buffalo other Buffalo buffalo.鈥�
Professor Pinker ascribed this bit of prose to one of his former students, Ann Senghas, now an assistant professor of psychology at Barnard College of Columbia University. But Rapaport reproduces on his Web page his (fairly amicable) e-mails with Pinker, Courier font and all, in which he states his claim of prior authorship and Pinker promises to make a change in the next edition.
