There exist wondrous peculiarities to language, which allow for some truly bizarre linguistic constructs. As an individual who generally revels in confusion, discord and chaos, in addition to the use of parenthetical clauses and preambles, I am, of course, thrilled by linguistic constructs that either work in spite of seeming not to or don’t work in spite of seeming to.
In doing a spot of research while writing this particular post, I happened to discover that wikipedia has a pretty great list of linguistic example sentences, which I highly recommend mining for entertainment purposes.
Preamble aside, I have two particular constructs that I want to mention, one a sentence and the other a phrase:
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
That is, that that is is, that that is not is not is that it it is. That is, that that is is that that is not is not. Is that it? It is.
The latter of these two, I mention because its use in a recent episode of Rocketboom, which I’ve taken to watching, brought it to my mind. The former, I have known and loved for a while and mention because I have not done so in this space prior to now. There are, of course, plenty of other sentences that I enjoy for similar reasons, some involving “had” or “that”, that were excluded for the sake of brevity.
Please feel free to return your seats to their upright position and your televisions to the regularly scheduled program.
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