The Ultimate Ultimate

After much deliberation, I have decided that the best final words a person can ever speak are these: “Avenge me.” It seems obvious, I suppose, but you have to consider the effect these words would have when spoken regardless of setting, audience or cause of death. For example, major bonus points if you die of old age and still demand that you be avenged. Similarly major bonus points if you’re speaking to someone who has no familial or emotional connection to you.

A close runner-up: “You must find the golden monkey before sundown.” I mostly took this one out of the running because it won’t work if the dying person suffers from dementia, in which case those around him or her will likely assume that this also resulted from the end-of-life crazies.

On what I believe is an unrelated note, please enjoy this photo of a buffalo standing in a living room. I had intended to write about it, but got distracted pondering the ultimate ultimate line of dialogue.

For group discussion: Could the buffalo represent death?

To Buffalo

This morning, the righteous Dina sent me a link to the Wikipedia page for a certain linguistic parlor trick. “I'm sure you've seen this and probably blogged about it, but it makes
me happy, and I would like to share,” she said. In fact I had not heard of this, but Dina nailed it on the head when she decided it was something worth sharing.

Generally credited to William J. Rapaport, an associate professor at the University of Buffalo, the following sentence is grammatically correct, at least in a technical sense.

“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.”

Technically correct, of course, is the best kind of correct. It describes the social hierarchy of buffalos at the Buffalo Zoo in Buffalo, New York. It employs three definitions for the word “buffalo”: the animal, the place and the verb meaning “to intimidate.” (Also, I should note that this is one verb I neglected to list in the post regarding animal name verbs, “Don’t Make Me Platypus All Over You.”) Translated into easier words, the sentence is trying to relate the fact that some buffaloes from the Buffalo Zoo that other buffaloes intimidate themselves also like to intimidate a third group of buffaloes in the zoo. Initially the sentence was problematic to me, even with the explanation. I kept feeling that any way I read it, the sentence omitted a crucial “that” whose presence grammar demanded.

In my mind, the sentence should have either read

Buffalo buffalo that buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

or

Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo that buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

Then i realized I was leaving out one "buffalo." Furthermore, neither of these interpretations really express what the sentence should, however, and I had to read the Wikipedia’s explanation of it several times in order to get it. Even still, the correct interpretation fades out of my head the instant I avert my attention to anything else, kind of like how you can work to see the alternate interpretation in an optical illusion, but then revert back to the initial image if you stop concentrating and then have to work back to the secondary one. A major clue is which words are capitalized, as you can tell those words have to be the city, excluding the first one, of course.

To explain, I’m going to employ so font modifications. In the below sentence the bold buffalo represents the city name, the italicized buffalo represents the animal and the plain one represents the verb.

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

This, to me, is the easiest way to parse the sentence. Think of every "Buffalo buffalo," with the capitalized one followed by the lower-case one, as "a group of buffalos from the city Buffalo." With that, you have

Various buffalo at the Buffalo zoo that other buffalo at the same zoo tend to intimidate in turn go and treat this third group of buffalo at the zoo in a similar way.

or

[One group of] Buffalo buffalo [that other] Buffalo buffalo [tend to] buffalo [themselves] buffalo [other] Buffalo buffalo.

or

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

It's like making algebra out of grammar, which you'd think I hate but apparently don't. Still, I can't believe I've typed the word "buffalo" this many times. Likely, more than a lot of people have in their lives, rather than Buffalo Bill. I can no longer even look at the word "buffalo" without thinking that it now looks wrong, just by virtue of me having stared at it for so long and noticing how weird it is.

The Wikipedia article also suggest others, including "Badgers badgers badger badger badgers." but I don't even want to attempt delving into those today. All of them, however, are what is known as "garden path sentences" — that is, a sentence you can't correctly understand without doubling back and re-reading. "The horse raced past the barn fell," for another example, in case your head doesn't hurt like mine.

And it's with no small sense of humor that I note "buffalo" can also mean "to confuse." Seriously, who thought "buffalo" was suitable to being a real word, anyway?

[ link: Wikipedia on "garden path sentences" ]