Oh, English grammar, I love you. From the amazing, quirky website, Mentalfloss, comes an article with seven sentences that sound crazy and nonsensical but are actually grammatically correct. Thinking about how interesting these sentences were, I thought I’d share them on here. Word to the wise, put your thinking caps on; these sentences require a bit of thinking! Thankfully, the article had enough explanation for me to get the gist, so I hope my interpretation/explanation of these make some sense to you. If they don’t, feel free to look at the article which explains it better.
1. One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas.
At first glance, you might be reading this as
One morning [I shot an elephant] [in my pajamas].
It makes sense structurally and grammatically, but there is another way to structure this. The other possible, and still gramatical reading would be
One morning [I shot] [an elephant in my pajamas].
This is one of those sentences I find to be quite eccentric and yet still amusing.
2. The horse raced past the barn fell.
This one took me a while to fully really understand, but this sentence is called a garden path sentence. It is basically a sentence that when we first read over interpret it incorrectly, making out the sentence to be different from its meaning. These types of sentences are illustrating the fact that when we read, we process the language one word at a time. The “garden path” of the sentence refers to us “being led down the garden path,” or being misled. So basically, as you read you structure your words in a way that should make sense, but then go onto the next word in the sentence and realize the structure becomes inconsistent with the new word, or the path down that you had been led. At first, we just read “the horse raced past the barn,” but the addition of the word ‘fell’ makes us have to readdresses the structure.
3. The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families.
Another garden path sentence, you may think something along the lines of, the complicated houses married single soldiers and their families, which makes no sense. this one is more understandable when you realize that “complex” here is not the adjective, but the noun, that “houses” is not the noun but the verb, and “married” is an adjective instead of a past tense verb. Still with me? Basically, the complex (apartment) houses (holds) married and single soldiers and their families. Make sense? It’s a weird one, but a lot less complicated than the last one.
4. The rat the cat the dog chased killed the malt.
This interesting sentence uses multiple centre embedding, where you put a phrase in the middle of another phase with the same type. Something like “I knew this guy, who knew this girl, who knew this kid, etc.” If it’s still confusing, you can watch this video, I’m sure you’ll get the idea if you don’t already. 😉
So then, what’s going on in this sentence? Well, the rat ate the malt, then got killed by the cat, who was chased by a dog. The grammar works, but figuring out what it means is a little more difficult.
5. Anyone who feels that if so many more students whom we haven’t actually admitted are sitting in on the course than ones we have that the room had to be changed, then probably auditors will have to be excluded, is likely to agree that the curriculum needs revision.
Okay, I’m actually lost on this one. I included it for the sake of seeing if anyone really understood it, because really, even with mentalfloss’ explanation, I still have no idea what it’s saying.
6. Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo.
My favorite sentence is this one right here. This sentence never gets old. As a starting point for understanding this, note that “buffalo” is a noun, a city and a verb meaning to intimidate. Seeing as how I’d probably mess up the explanation for this, just check out wikipedia’s explanation.
Confusing? Yes. But oh so fun to say, just because.
7. This exceeding trifling witling, considering ranting criticizing concerning adopting fitting wording being exhibiting transcending learning, was displaying, notwithstanding ridiculing, surpassing boasting swelling reasoning, respecting correcting erring writing, and touching detecting deceiving arguing during debating.
That’s a lot of “-ings.” And it apparently means, “This very superficial grammatist, supposing empty criticism about the adoption of proper phraseology to be a show of extraordinary erudition, was displaying, in spite of ridicule, a very boastful turgid argument concerning the correction of false syntax, and about the detection of false logic in debate.” Still kind of complicated to me, but I get the gist.
Well, all these are great and wonderful examples of the wonders of English grammar. I hope you enjoyed that little brain twister, and have gained a better appreciation of the English language.
Article from here, sources from sentences: 1. Groucho Marx; 2. Bever (1970); 3. Wikipedia; 4. Chomsky & Miller (1963); 5. Chomsky & Miller (1963); 6. William Rapaport; 7. Goold Brown (1851).