John's Blog

"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" is a grammatically correct sentence illustrating the use of homonyms and homophones (NOT to be confused with homophobes) to create a sentence.

A professor at The University at Buffalo (naturally) came up with it, using three different meanings of the word buffalo: the city, the animal, and the verb. Translated to less confusing language (perhaps) the meaning becomes "Bison from upstate New York who are intimidated by other bison in their community also happen to intimidate other bison in their community."

Much like the sentence "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" crafted by Noam Chomsky as an example of correct grammar that yields nonsensical results.

His goal was to illustrate the need for better models, which seems like a laudable goal. Looking at Adriana Lima, I'd have to say he was successful. Although it's entirely possible that he meant the more traditional, intellectual sort of model that represents the conceptual relationships present. But I'm sticking with my interpretation, despite the evidence to the contrary.

Tags: trivia, language, models