As I mentioned a few entries ago, one of my categories for this week's Jeo-Party featured trinomial tautonyms, like "bison bison bison" which is the scientific genus/species/subspecies of the The Great Plains Buffalo. This inspired my friend to mention the sentence "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" which is a grammatically correct sentence made up of homonyms that creates "lexical ambiguity". It has been discussed since 1967 when it appeared in Dmitri Borgmann's "Beyond Language: Adventures in Word and Thought." (which I must put on my to-read list).
The sentence works because the word "buffalo" can mean three different things:
buffalo: bison (noun)
buffalo: confuse (verb)
So the sentence, "Buffalo buffalo, Buffalo buffalo buffalo, buffalo Buffalo buffalo" basically means:
"Bison from New York, which confuse bison from New York, confuse bison from New York." Makes sense when you lay it out like that!
By the way, I have now typed the word buffalo 26 times and my brain has started to hurt; the word now looks weird (ironically, confusing) to me. And there's a word for that! "Semantic Satiation" - a psychological phenomenon when a word loses its meaning after being repeated over and over without interruption. David Balota, a researcher and professor of psychology and neurology at Washington University in St. Louis, explains, "What that means is that neural systems in the brain can be fatigued by repeated stimulation." This happens to me ALL the time, with the most basic words if repeated over and over and over again.
As typical, I have fallen into a lexical wormhole (or rabbit hole), and have found several other delightful examples of words that can also be put together in sentences of lexical ambiguity.
"Police police, Police police police, police Police police" means "Cops from Poland, whom cops from Poland patrol, patrol cops from Poland" because:
police: cop (noun)
police: patrol (verb)
"Will, will Will will Will Will's will?" means "Boy1, will Boy2 bequeath to Boy3 Boy2's document?
will: question of intent (verb)
will: to bequeath (verb)
will: document of inheritance upon death (noun)
"Fish fish fish fish fish fish" means "Fish, that other fish fish, that other fish fish, fish." (this explanation is super helpful)
fish: to catch an animal living in water (verb)
I so delight in words. In a future life, I am going to be a lexicographer (one who studies words and compiles dictionaries) or an etymologist (one who studies the origin and history of words) or a linguist (one who studies language and its structure, including the study of morphology, syntax, phonetics, and semantics). Until then, I'll just blog about words and ask questions about them on Jeo-Party :)
With delight,
♥Jamie
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