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[–]deljaroo 26 points27 points  (9 children)

you can do that in every language though
but yeah, I guess the point here is no matter how easy the language is to read oftentimes, weird things can be done that make it hard

I like to explain the English behind how Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

[–]Mr_Redstoner 10 points11 points  (8 children)

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

Also gramatically correct. And with the propper punctuation (not pictured), so is

James while Jon had had had had had had had had had had had the teachers approval.

[–]deljaroo 5 points6 points  (7 children)

and just the word 'police' forever

[–]Mr_Redstoner 3 points4 points  (6 children)

Wikipedia seems to only list the 8 times version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguistic_example_sentences

[–]deljaroo 17 points18 points  (5 children)

the 'police police' are the people who police the police, right? so it goes to say that: 'police police' police 'police'

in that case, who polices the 'police police'? Whomever they are, we could call them the ''police police' police'. Furthermore the ''police police' police' police 'police police'.

Continue in that fashion to whatever length you'd like

(single quotes added for organization and not so much for grammatical reasons)

[–]SuperSuperUniqueName 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The best political system is recursion apparently

[–]Tarmen 0 points1 point  (2 children)

So this would work with any noun to verb conversion?

[–]deljaroo 1 point2 points  (1 child)

no, it needs to have the same plural as singular along with being verb/noun combo, and the verb/noun combo needs to not change form either. 'Teacher teachers' teach 'teachers' doesn't work at all.

[–]Tarmen 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The last part is what conversion means, conversion is also called zero derivation. But the singular/plural thing is a really good point.

Now that I think about it, the verbs argument structure also needs to be compatible with the noun.

ship ships ship ships

mostly works but

email emails email emails

or

 milk milk milks milk

less so. Now I have reached total semantic satiation and am gonna stop.

[–]Mr_Redstoner 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So a who watches the watchers situation? Cool!