Even Cathy Berberian knows...she can't sing

[Michael Bailey]

i HAD tO kNOW, so I found out:

http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/BuffaloBuffalo/buffalobuffalo.html

my precis:

(it's sort of like the class of all classes that do not include
themselves...inasmuch as it's rather hard to grasp until you
understand it)

a) mice cats chase eat cheese
(ie, mice ,(whom) cats chase, eat cheese)

b) dogs (whom) dogs dog, (themselves) dog (certain other) dogs

c) buffalo (whom certain other) buffalo buffalo (ie, play for a fool),
themselves buffalo (other, presumably even more gullible) buffalo

d) If we posit a certain confidence trick peculiar to the buffalo in
the Buffalo (NY) zoo...
(like a dance known as the "Kenosha", perhaps...), then...

Buffalo buffalo (ie, buffalo in the Buffalo zoo) (whom)(other) Buffalo
buffalo (play for a fool using the confidence trick known as the)
Buffalo buffalo (are known, themselves, to perform the) Buffalo
buffalo (upon other, presumably even more gullible) Buffalo buffalo --
makes perfect sense, and many of us have seen it happen!

-- and here's the relevant quote from the link:

Date: Fri, 14 Apr 1995 15:22:26 -0400
From: "William J. Rapaport"
To: BERWICK at AI.MIT.EDU
Subject: Buffalo sentences

Dear Professor Berwick:

I'm trying to track down the various origins of the Buffalo sentences
that you discuss in your book with Barton and Ristad.

Here's my version of the history:

1. In 1972, I took a graduate course in Philosophy of Language with
John Tienson at Indiana University. He gave the sentence:

      Dogs dogs dog dog dogs

as an example of a syntactically and semantically correct sentence
that was difficult for humans to parse without already understanding
it (along the lines of "mice cats chase eat cheese"). My fellow grads
and I tried to come up with a more aesthetically pleasing sentence
without the -s plural marker. We rejected "fish fish fish fish fish"
since one normally fishes *for* something. I then devised "buffalo
buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo". Not being satisfied, I considered
the buffalo in the Buffalo zoo (the Buffalo buffalo) and their unique
way of buffaloing the other Buffalo buffalo, so unique that, like
Tennessee waltzing, it's called Buffalo buffaloing, whence:

      Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
Buffalo buffalo

2. Since 1976, I have been using those sentences in my courses at SUNY Buffalo.





-- 
"I have left my book,
I have left my room,
For I heard your voice
singing through the gloom" - James Joyce