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amichal | 11 months ago
I agree with you and when I (a non-linguist) first learned about this it did occur to me that there was probably some infinite recursive version and it took *some* of the fun out of it. Its' still fun as is this list.
I also suspect there are lots of good examples of whatever a word with multiple meanings with different parts of speech is called. So it should be possible to find...use many "Buffalo buffalo buffalo..."
bryanrasmussen|11 months ago
SamBam|11 months ago
One word: "Police!" This is the odd-duck, you can have a one-word imperative statement telling you to police.
Rule 1: We can always have a [Noun phrase] + [verb], the verb just says what the noun phrase does.
Two words: "Police police." (Cops police) What do cops do? They police.
Rule 2: Any time you have a [noun phrase] + [verb], you can add a direct object to the verb.
Three words: "Police police police." Who do the cops police? They police other cops.
Finally rule 3: Any time you have a [subject] + [verb] + [object] you can rearrange the object to make it the subject of a new sentence. In this case, the subject of the new sentence would be "Cops that other cops police." Or "Police (that) police police."
In English, the "that" is not necessary (though it usually helps with clarity). For instance, we can say "Mice cats eat are usually the slow ones."
Then apply rule 1, we can take any noun phrase and add a verb to it to describe what those entities do. ("Mice cats eat die.")
So four words (Rule 3 + 1): "Police police police police." The cops that other cops police, themselves police.
Five words, from rule 2, who do they police? "Police police police police police."
Six words, from rules 3 + 1, rearrange and add a verb: "Police police police police police police."
etc.