Bualo bualo Bualo bualo bualo bualo Bu...

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Bualo bualo Bualo bualo bualo bualo Bualo bualo

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"Bualo bualo Bualo bualo bualo bualo Bualo bualo" is a grammatically valid sentence in American English, used as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated linguistic constructs. It has been discussed in literature since 1972 when the sentence was used by William J. Rapaport, an associate professor at the University at [1] Bualo. It was posted to Linguist List [2] by Rapaport in 1992. It was also featured in Steven Pinker's 1994 book The Language Instinct as an example of a sentence that is "seemingly nonsensical" but grammatical. Pinker names his student Annie Senghas as the [3] inventor of the sentence.

Simplied parse tree PN = proper noun N = noun V = verb NP = noun phrase RC = relative clause VP = verb phrase S = sentence

The sentence's meaning becomes clearer when it's understood that it uses the city of Bualo, New York and the somewhat-uncommon verb "to bualo" (meaning "to bully or intimidate"), and when the punctuation and grammar is expanded so that the sentence reads as follows: "Bualo bualo that Bualo bualo bualo, bualo Bualo bualo." The meaning becomes even clearer when synonyms are used: "Bualo bison that other Bualo bison bully, themselves bully Bualo bison."

Contents
1 Sentence construction 1.1 Usage 2 Other words 3 See also 4 Notes 5 External links 5.1 Video clip

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Sentence construction
The sentence is unpunctuated and uses three dierent readings of the word "bualo". In order of their rst use, these are a. the city of Bualo, New York, United States, which is used as a noun adjunct in the sentence and is followed by the animal; n. the noun bualo, an animal, in the plural (equivalent to "bualoes" or "bualos"), in order to avoid articles; v. the verb "bualo" meaning to bully, confuse, deceive, or intimidate. Marking each "bualo" with its use as shown above gives:
a n a n v Bualo bualo Bualo bualo bualo v a n bualo Bualo bualo .

Reed-Kellogg diagram of the sentence

The sentence makes use of the allowability in English of reduced relative clauses those that contain no relative pronoun or other relativizing marker. Hence the relative that or which that might appear between the second and third words of the sentence can be omitted. Thus, the sentence when parsed reads as a claim that bison who are intimidated or bullied by bison are themselves intimidating or bullying bison (at least in the city of Bualo implicitly, Bualo, NY): Bualo bualo (bualo from Bualo NY) [that] Bualo bualo bualo (that the bualo from Bualo NY bully) bualo Bualo bualo (are bullying bualo from Bualo NY) [Those] bualo(es) from Bualo [that are intimidated by] bualo(es) from Bualo intimidate bualo(es) from Bualo. Bison from Bualo, New York, who are intimidated by other bison in their community, also happen to intimidate other bison in their community. THE bualo FROM Bualo WHO ARE
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Bison engaged in a contest of dominance. This sentence supposes they have a history of such bullying with other bualo, and they are from upstate New York.

A comic explaining the concept

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bualo_bualo_Bua...

bualoED BY bualo FROM Bualo, bualo (verb) OTHER bualo FROM Bualo. Bualo bualo (main clause subject) [which the] Bualo bualo (subordinate clause subject) bualo (subordinate clause verb) bualo (main clause verb) Bualo bualo (main clause direct object). The sentence can be claried by substituting the synonym "bison" for the animal "bualo", "bully" for the verb "bualo", and "New York" to refer to the state of the city Bualo: "New York bison New York bison bully bully New York bison", or: "New York bison whom other New York bison bully, themselves bully New York bison". Or, alternatively with the city name intact: "Bualo bison Bualo bison bully bully Bualo bison". Removing the classier noun "Bualo" (the city) further claries the sentence (note that the initial capital is retained as the common noun "bualo" now starts the sentence): "Bualo bualo bualo bualo bualo." "Bison [that other] bison bully [also] bully bison."

Usage
Thomas Tymoczko has pointed out that there is nothing special about eight "bualos"; any sentence consisting solely of the word "bualo" repeated any number of times is grammatically correct. The shortest is "Bualo!", which can be taken as an imperative instruction to bully someone ("[You] bualo!") with the [4] implied subject "you" removed. Tymoczko uses the sentence as an example [5] illustrating rewrite rules in linguistics.

Other words
Other English words can be used to make grammatical (but not necessarily meaningful) sentences of this form, containing endless consecutive repetitions. Any word that is both a plural noun and an uninected transitive verb will work; for example, police or dice. A somewhat similar non-punctuated example is "James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better eect on the teacher". This could concern a situation in an English class regarding the usage of the word had, and might be punctuated as, "James, while John had had 'had', had had 'had had'; 'had had' had had a better eect on the teacher."

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See also
Eats, Shoots & Leaves Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den List of linguistic example sentences Recursion Semantic satiation

Notes
1. ^ Rapaport, William J. 22 September 2006. "A History of the Sentence "Bualo bualo bualo Bualo bualo." (http://www.cse.bualo.edu/~rapaport/bualobualo.html) ". Accessed 23 September 2006. (archived copy (http://web.archive.org /web/20070320205923/http://www.cse.bualo.edu/~rapaport/bualobualo.html) ) 2. ^ Rapaport, William J. 19 February 1992. "Message 1: Re: 3.154 Parsing Challenges (http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/3/3-175.html#1) ". Accessed 14 September 2006. 3. ^ Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language, William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York, 1994. p. 210 4. ^ Thomas Tymoczko; James M. Henle (2000). Sweet reason: a eld guide to modern logic (http://books.google.com/?id=LQnsSuvP9dAC&pg=PA99) (2 ed.). Birkhuser. pp. 99100, 104. ISBN 978-0-387-98930-3 5. ^ Thomas Tymoczko; James M. Henle (2000). Sweet reason: a eld guide to modern logic (http://books.google.com/?id=LQnsSuvP9dAC&pg=PA99) (2 ed.). Birkhuser. pp. 104105. ISBN 978-0-387-98930-3

External links
"Bualoing bualo (http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives /001817.html) " at Language Log, 20 January 2005 Easdown, David. Teaching mathematics: the gulf between semantics (meaning) and syntax (form) (http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/pubs/publist/preprints /2006/easdown-13.pdf) PDF (273 KB) The Emory Wheel, Andrew Swerlick What a Herd of Confused Bison from Upstate New York Can Teach Us About Our Diculties With the English Language (http://www.emorywheel.com/detail.php?n=24992)

Video clip
Explanation of the concept (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hv-fMZgyuaw) on YouTube Video explanation of this sentence (https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=65Mv3jHgiew) on YouTube Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org

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