Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo
That string of eight identical words is a grammatically complete English sentence. It has a subject, a verb, and a clause.
The sentence 'Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo' is grammatically correct English. It was documented by linguist William Rapaport in a 1972 paper and has since become a standard demonstration of syntactic ambiguity in introductory linguistics courses.
The trick works because 'buffalo' serves three distinct grammatical functions in English. As a proper noun, it names the city in New York State. As a common noun, it names the American bison. As a verb, it means to bully or intimidate — as in 'he tried to buffalo me into signing.'
Parsed out: [Buffalo buffalo] [Buffalo buffalo buffalo] [buffalo] [Buffalo buffalo]. Or in English: bison from Buffalo [that] bison from Buffalo bully [also] bully bison from Buffalo. The middle cluster 'Buffalo buffalo buffalo' is a relative clause without an explicit 'that' — a construction English allows freely, as in 'the man I met' rather than 'the man that I met.'
The sentence can be extended indefinitely. 'Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo' is also valid. At some length it stops being useful as a sentence and starts being a stress test for parsers, which is largely why computer scientists and linguists keep returning to it.
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