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I'm not convinced this one is even grammatical. At minimum, omitting the semicolon should make it a run-on sentence.


The trick to all of these sentences is to omit otherwise necessary punctuation. The rare exceptions are sentences describing recursive concepts. For instance, if you have a radar detector, the police will catch you because they have a radar detector detector, which makes it imperative that you own a radar detector detector detector.

Here's another example: who polices the police? If there were any one agency in charge of that, certainly we would call them the police police. But who polices the police police? Clearly, the police police police police the police police.


There may be a lack of pronunciation but written English has clear rules demanding punctuation. The use of quoted words without quotation marks in the OP 'sentence' is ridiculous.

Buffalo buffalo and radar detector detector detector are much more valid.


Ugh, I meant punctuation. (Edited my comment to reflect that as well, but let the record stand that it originally had "pronunciation".)

My brain puts the words "punctuation" and "pronunciation" in the same hash bucket so I can never get the right one out reliably.


Oh. Well the Buffalo sentence doesn't omit punctuation, yet manages to be perfectly confusing. :)




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