
Noun noun noun noun noun verb - gruseom
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=279
======
icey
Any time I see language hackery like this, I can't help but think about the
perennial favorite "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo
buffalo."

(I'll save you a trip to google:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo)
)

Another one for the linguistic jihadists is
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_while_John_had_had_had_ha...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_while_John_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_a_better_effect_on_the_teacher)

~~~
gruseom
Classics! And the Wikipedia pages do a great job of explaining them.

I have a real life example. A friend in college was helping a girl prepare for
her english-as-a-foreign-language exam. They were looking over English verb
tenses and he wanted to correct a mistake she had made. Without thinking about
it he said, "If you had had 'had' here, you would have had to have had 'have'
there." She freaked out.

Edit: can't figure out if that last "had" belongs in there or not. :)

~~~
Xichekolas
It does. Although to make slightly more clear:

"If you had had 'had' here" => "If you would have put 'had' here"

"you would have had" => "you would have needed"

"to have had 'have' there" => "to have put 'have' there"

That is the kind of really amusing sentence we say every day without thinking
about it. I've caught myself saying similar things while speaking to non-
native speakers, and it's always a crapshoot. We really are lazy and use the
verb 'to have' a lot.

Nice example.

~~~
silentbicycle
It's probably used considerably more in _spoken_ English, where intonation can
help with the ambiguity. I have a hard time believing somebody would use "had"
so many times together in writing without trying to rephrase themselves.

'Have' is also an interesting case, because aside from meaning the act of
possessing, it is also a kind of case/tense modifier for other verbs. ("I
_ate_ " vs. "I _would have eaten_ " + "the whole tub of gelato.")

In the writing above, you put the third had in single quotes, which implies
you're discussing the word usage itself rather than trying to use it again.
Similarly, your intonation would probably be elongated. Granted, a non-fluent
speaker may not yet pick up on these cues, but they are there.

