
James while John had had had ... had had had a better effect on the teacher - DanielRibeiro
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
A friend of mine tells a story that's about as close as real life gets to this
kind of language trick. He was helping a friend in college study for her Test
of English as a Foreign Language. She was working on past tenses and,
sincerely attempting to explain a mistake she'd made, he told her: "If you had
had 'had' here, you would have had to have had 'had' there as well." Whereupon
she screamed.

------
slurgfest
As English, this stuff is totally incomprehensible and unusable. Absolutely
nothing is conveyed to actual human English speakers by saying the word
'buffalo' 400 times in a row.

If it is 'grammatical' then it is grammatical by virtue of conforming to some
idealized grammar. But when this grammar is so far off not just from anything
people say, but anything they can actually understand, it really only means
that the idea that this grammar models real English has been reduced to total
absurdity.

~~~
jfarmer
Don't take it too literally. It's meant as a kind of linguistic koan to
illustrate the concept of prosody.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosody_(linguistics)>

Consider the difference in how one says

    
    
        He ate that
    

vs

    
    
        He ate that?
    

That's prosody. The difference in meaning isn't a consequence of the presence
of the question mark, although that's what people think of as "grammatical."
The presence of the question mark and the difference in meaning are both
consequences of the prosodic differences between the two sentences.

This shows one of many challenges inherent computational linguistics: "the
written word" only encapsulates a small part of what it means to "speak
English" or "understand English."

As a nice benefit, it makes the sort of grammarian who obsesses over the
written word look (rightly) like they're missing the forest for the trees.

~~~
Dylan16807
While you have a point in there, some things are still missing. In my opinion
the buffalo sentence doesn't have enough prosody to ever make the verbal
version intelligible without explanation. The sentence in the OP does, but
it's also missing mandatory punctuation. Punctuation conveys a solid fraction
of the information prosody does, and sometimes even contains information
prosody doesn't.

------
nathell
This can go on indefinitely, recursively.

The story behind this sentence is of two students comparing their texts, the
one with "had" (version 1), the other with "had had" version 1, yielding 11
"had"s in a row. Call that story S_0. Now imagine a story S_(n+1) where two
students write texts discussing story S_n, with version 1 replaced by the
consecutive row of "had"s from S_n, and version 2 replaced by a similar row of
"had"s, but one longer.

~~~
philwelch
An example which itself suggests a possible recursion:

"Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And
and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign' have been clearer if quotation
marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And,
and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well
as after Chips?"

~~~
vacri
_Fish and And and And and Chips_

The correct way to do this sentence is "I want to put hyphens between the
words Fish, And,* and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign"

*The Oxford comma makes a lot more sense because it reflects how we speak, but even if you omit it, this is the correct way to present a list of items - you don't use 'and' between every one.

Edit: I was wondering which other rules I was breaking with that sentence -
I'm sure there's more :)

~~~
vorg
You'd better write _hyphens_ , as in "I want to put _hyphens_ between the
words Fish, And, and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign".

------
AaronBBrown
During an English class in High School, my teacher (we'll call him Mr. Jones)
came into the classroom and saw the following written on the blackboard.

    
    
        YOU SUCK JONES
    

Mr. Jones proceeded to make this into a lesson about the importance of commas.

    
    
        YOU SUCK, JONES
    

and

    
    
        YOU, SUCK JONES
    

have wildly different meanings.

~~~
drakeandrews
There was a sign in front of a lake saying:

    
    
        PRIVATE PROPERTY
        NO SWIMMING ALLOWED
    

But by adding a few punctuation marks:

    
    
        PRIVATE PROPERTY?
        NO, SWIMMING ALLOWED.
    

The meaning of the sign was reversed.

~~~
chinpokomon
I get a chuckle out of the

    
    
        SLOW
      CHILDREN
    

signs. Should you read that as:

    
    
      Slow Children
    

or

    
    
      Slow, Children?
    

When you see a

    
    
      DEAF
      CHILD
    

sign nearby, the inappropriate interpretation is reinforced.

~~~
peteretep
We learned something pretty useful at the bird sanctuary: "Quiet birds have
ears".

------
pfarrell
Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And
and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign' have been clearer if quotation
marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And,
and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well
as after Chips?

~~~
philwelch
Wouldn't the sentence, "Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between
the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign' have been
clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and
and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and
and and Chips, as well as after Chips?" have been clearer if quotation marks
had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and between and and
between, and between between Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and and,
and and and and, and and and and, and and and and, and and and And, and and
And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and and, and and and
and, and and and and, and and and and, and and and And, and And and and, and
and and And, and And and and, and and and and, and and and and, And and and
and, And and and and, And and and Chips, as well as after Chips?

------
vacri
_I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting,
nevertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality counterbalancing
indecipherability transcendentalizes intercommunication's
incomprehensibleness._

word 1 = 1 letter, word 20 = 20 letters. A friend didn't like
"intercommunication's", but hasn't replied on the worth of
'intercommunicationy'...

------
rrrhys
"John wrote 'had'. James wrote 'had had'. James' answer had a better effect on
the teacher."

~~~
crntaylor
James's answer _had_ had a better effect on the teacher ;)

~~~
homonculus
Only if the previous two sentences contain "had written."

~~~
gruseom
No, crntaylor has it right: we're supposed to understand that James wrote what
he did because it had had a better effect on the teacher in the past. That's
how you can justify squeezing that one last "had" in there.

------
eliben
Folks should first learn to correctly use "its" vs. "it's" and "lets" vs.
"let's". _Then_ graduate to correct past-perfect usage :-)

~~~
dmckeon
Mnemonic: his, hers, its. Works for me when memory and other methods do not.

~~~
pyre
I always remember that it's "it's" because the apostrophe replaces the missing
letters in contractions. E.g.

    
    
      it is => it's
    

The possessive of 'it' doesn't need to replace any letters, so it's just
"its."

~~~
blahedo
If you are using this as a mnemonic about its/it's, this is fine; but your
statement of it is as a rule ("the apostrophe replaces the missing letters in
contractions") is misleadingly incomplete. Apostrophes do that, but they also
serve as a possessive marker in the general case ("Sam's"), which is of course
why its/it's causes so much trouble in the first place.

~~~
pyre

      | If you are using this as a mnemonic about its/it's,
      | this is fine; but your statement of it is as a rule
    

No need to be so pedantic. We're not teaching an English course here, we're
talking about mnemonics for its/it's.

If you need a general rule, how about:

    
    
      when a possessive and a contraction collide,
      the contraction wins

~~~
blahedo
No need; I think the original formulation--- _as a mnemonic_ \---is just fine.
We don't really need a "general rule" here anyway, and to be honest, English
orthography and "general rules" don't really go well together.

The only reason I posted at all is because linguistics is an area where a lot
of quite intelligent people hold some extremely unexamined (and incorrect)
beliefs, and there is furthermore a common tendency to propagate those beliefs
as if they were fact. As a result, whenever I see someone articulating
anything that is formulated like a general rule about a language (or about
language in general), I try to make corrections where I can.

~~~
pyre
You took "the apostrophe replaces the missing letters in contractions" as me
postulating that all apostrophes are _only_ used for contractions, which is
jumping to conclusions, IMO.

Even if that statement is taken as a general rule, I can't think of any
contractions that don't use an apostrophe, and it certainly doesn't state that
contractions are the only place where apostrophes are used.

------
speeder
And I thought that Portuguese could be ambiguous....

I don't think these.sorts of phrases are valid in Portuguese.

~~~
personlurking
Can you give an example of its ambiguity? I speak Portuguese but nothing
ambiguous is coming to mind at this particular moment.

~~~
slammdunc23
In my Portuguese class we were given this ambiguous phrase as a riddle:

"Maria toma banho porque sua mãe disse ela traga a toalha."

We had to make those words make sense only by adding punctuation and without
changing the order of any words. Can you figure it out?

For those who don't speak Portuguese, the phrase above translates to: "Maria
takes a bath because her mom said to her bring the towel." Doesn't make much
sense!

The trick is that "sua," which means "her" when the following noun is
feminine, is also the present third-person singular of the verb "suar,"
meaning "to sweat." Thus, with a few commas and quotation marks, it suddenly
makes sense:

Maria toma banho porque sua. "Mãe," disse ela, "traga a toalha."

=

Maria takes a bath because she sweats. "Mom," she said, "bring the towel."

Not nearly as ambiguous as the "had had had had" example, but a similar lesson
regarding the need for punctuation.

Edit: as personlurking pointed out, suar is "to sweat," not (as I put
originally) "to smell." Thanks for catching that!

~~~
personlurking
Oh, yes, I remember that one. Portuguese is not my first language, but I am
fluent. I've been given that phrase before (and failed on the suar part
despite knowing that verb). Tricky, indeed. Just a small correction, suar is
to sweat.

I recall a protest sign that said "Veta Dilma!", or "Veto Dilma!" (the
President of Brazil), but the protester meant to put a comma in there, as in
"Veto, Dilma!" because the protest was about a bill running through congress.

Another one was "Mesmo sujo, governo quer rio Pinheiros sem cheiro" (Even
though it's dirty, the government wants the Pinheiros river to be rid of the
bad smell). The problem is the wording which makes it seem like the government
is dirty, and not the river. Better would have been "Governo quer rio
Pinheiros sem mau cheiro, mesmo que sujo" (The government wants the Pinheiros
river without the bad smell, even though it's dirty.).

------
artsrc
Functional languages provide the ability to (promote?) write expressions that
remind me of this sentence.

Just because you can do without temporaries does not mean you should.

~~~
lclarkmichalek
How so? The problem comes from having a highly context sensitive grammar,
which is hardly something I associate specifically with functional languages;
C++ is the usual language that people mock for having an all but Turing
complete grammar. I guess the other obvious candidate is Lisp, but that's a
different beast all together.

~~~
artsrc
I agree with you that the context sensitive grammar make this sentence hard to
parse. However if you look at the clarifications of meaning they break things
into bits.

In some languages (e.g.: Java without lambdas), you can't write a function
without giving it a name. You have to break things into bits and give them
names.

In the functional languages you can just create a lambda and use it.

In a functional style conditionals return values you can use directly. In
languages like Java you end up having to assign to temporaries in the branches
of the if.

------
GhotiFish
Notice my name?

Some clever bugger managed to get ghoti

and ghoughpteighbteau doesn't fit.

Fun fact: I do not know how to spell ghoughpteighbteau, but I can type it.

------
mattquiros
But isn't the "while John had had 'had'" segment a dangling modifier and
hence, this sentence is wrong?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangling_modifier>

------
notdrunkatall
Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo)

~~~
jkn
I can't resist mentioning the _Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den_ poem I came
across recently. The poet plays with the many tones and many variants of the
sound 'sh' in Chinese:

    
    
      « Shī Shì shí shī shǐ »
      Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.
      Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.
      Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.
      Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì.
      Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì.
      Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì.
      Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.
      Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.
      Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī shī, shí shí shí shī shī.
      Shì shì shì shì.
    

Translation:

    
    
      « Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den »
      In a stone den was a poet called Shi, who was a lion addict, and had resolved to eat ten lions.
      He often went to the market to look for lions.
      At ten o'clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market.
      At that time, Shi had just arrived at the market.
      He saw those ten lions, and using his trusty arrows, caused the ten lions to die.
      He brought the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den.
      The stone den was damp. He asked his servants to wipe it.
      After the stone den was wiped, he tried to eat those ten lions.
      When he ate, he realized that these ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses.
      Try to explain this matter.
    

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-
Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_D...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-
Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den)

~~~
drakeandrews
When written in chinese, is there any more indication that it's not just the
same word forty or so times than in the romanised version?

~~~
rtkwe
Check the wiki link, it has the characters instead of the pinyin. To answer
your question yes the characters are very different.

