Okay, based on an example in Stephen Pinker’s excellent book The Language Instinct, I’ve got a favorite new brain teaser: all you have to do is punctuate the following series of words such that they’re a grammatically correct sentence.
Considering too many people call the American Bison a buffalo when it isn’t, and that the scientific name for the American Bison is Bison bison, I’d say you got a herd for four there, Bill.
[spoiler]‘Buffalo’ is a plural noun, a verb and an adjective. “Buffalo buffalo” means “Shaggy oxlike animals intimidate.” Add a ‘buffalo’ at the end and you have 'Shaggy oxlike animals intimidate [other] shaggy oxlike animals." Specify that the shaggy oxlike animals are from a city in Western New York and you get “Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.”
Unfortunately, that only gets us to five buffaloes.
I could see if it was ‘Buffalo buffalo buffalo; Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.’ Sadly, it’s not, so I assume I’m just missing something.[/spoiler]
Okay, for those who wanna try it out for real (and the answer is a grammatically correct sentence, with subject and verb and everything), here’s your first hint:
[spoiler]I did it in all-caps to be a pain in the butt. If you wanna do it in normal case, it should look like:
Could I do the same for sheep, or am I totally on the wrong track?
This is what’s wrong with the British educational system, I’ve never been formally taught grammar as a seperate subject.
