List of linguistic example sentences

Ambiguity

Lexical ambiguity

• Will, will Will will Will Will's will? – Will, will Will will Will Will's will ?
• Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. – Buffaloes from Buffalo, NY, whom buffaloes from Buffalo bully, bully buffaloes from Buffalo.
• Police police Police police police police Police police. – Cops from Police, Poland, whom cops from Poland patrol, patrol cops from Poland.
• Rose rose to put rose roes on her rows of roses. – Rose rose to put rose roes on her rows of roses .
• James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher – With punctuation: "James, while John had had 'had', had had 'had had'. 'Had had' had had a better effect on the teacher", or "James, while John had had 'had had', had had 'had'. 'Had had' had had a better effect on the teacher"
• That that is is that that is not is not is that it it is – Grammatically corrected as: "That that is, is. That that is not, is not. Is that it? It is".
• Can can can can can can can can can can. – "Examples of the can-can dance that other examples of the same dance are able to outshine, or figuratively to put into the trashcan, are themselves able to outshine examples of the same dance". It could alternatively be interpreted as a question, "Is it possible for examples of the dance that have been outshone to outshine others?" or several other ways.
• Martin Gardner offered the example: "Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign' have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?"

  Syntactic ambiguity

• We saw her duck.
• One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know.
• Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

  Syntactic ambiguity, incrementality, and local coherence

• Reduced relative clauses
• * The horse raced past the barn fell.
• * The coach smiled at the player tossed the frisbee.
• * While the man was hunting the deer ran through the forest.

  Scope ambiguity and anaphora resolution

• Every farmer who owns a donkey beats it.

  Embedding

• The rat the cat the dog bit chased escaped.
• The editor authors the newspaper hired liked laughed.
• The man who the boy who the students recognized pointed out is a friend of mine.

  Punctuation

Word order

Order of adjectives

• The big red balloon.

Ending sentence with preposition

Avoidance

• This is the sort of English up with which I will not put. The sentence "does not demonstrate the absurdity of using fronting instead of stranding; it merely illustrates the ungrammaticality resulting from fronting something that is not a constituent".

  Compound use

• "A father of a little boy goes upstairs after supper to read to his son, but he brings the wrong book. The boy says, 'What did you bring that book that I don't want to be read to out of up for?

  Parallels

• The enemy destroyed the city.
• The enemy's destruction of the city.

  Neurolinguistics

• She spread the bread with socks.

• More people have been to Russia than I have.

  Combinatorial complexity

• Colorless green ideas sleep furiously : example that is grammatically correct but based on semantic combinations that are contradictory and therefore would not normally occur.
• Hold the news reader's nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers.

  Semantics and context

• The large ball crashed right through the table because it was made of Styrofoam: ambiguous use of a pronoun: The word "it" refers to the table being made of Styrofoam; but "it" refers to the large ball if we replace "Styrofoam" with "steel" without any other change in its syntactic parse.
• The bee landed on the flower because it had pollen: The pronoun "it" refers to the "flower" but changes to the "bee" if we replace "had" with "wanted".

  Relevance conditionals

• There are biscuits on the table if you want some
• If I may be honest, you're not looking good

  Non-English examples

Ojibwe">Ojibwe language">Ojibwe

• Gdaa-naanaanaa, Aanaa, naa? meaning "We should fetch Ana, shouldn't we?".

  [Latin]

• King Edward II of England was killed, reportedly after Adam of Orleton, one of his gaolers, received a message, probably from Mortimer, reading "Edwardum occidere nolite timere bonum est". This can be read either as "Edwardum occidere nolite; timere bonum est" or as "Edwardum occidere nolite timere; bonum est". This ambiguous sentence has been much discussed by various writers, including John Harington
• Ibis redibis nunquam per bella peribis.

  [Mandarin Chinese]

• Various sentences using the syllables,,,, and are often used to illustrate the importance of tones to foreign learners. One example:.
• Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den: poem of 92 characters, all with the sound shi when read in Modern Standard Mandarin

  Japanese">Japanese language">Japanese

• Although at first glance the single character sentence :ja:子子子子子子子子子子子子|子子子子子子子子子子子子 does not seem to make sense, when this sentence is read using the right readings of the kanji 子, it means "the young of cat, kitten, and the young of lion, cub". It is told in the work Ujishūi Monogatari that the Japanese poet Ono no Takamura used this reading to escape death.

  Czech">Czech language">Czech

• Jedli na hoře bez holí, meaning either "they ate elderberries on a mountain using a stick" or "they ate on a mountain without any sticks" or "they ate elderberry using a stick to eat their sorrow away"; depending on the phrasing or a correct placement or punctuation, at least 7 meanings can be obtained. Replacing "na hoře" by "nahoře", one obtains 5 more meanings. If separating words using spaces is also permitted, the total number of known possible meanings rises to 58.

  Korean">Korean language">Korean

• In Gyeongsang dialect, the repetition of the syllable 가 with the right intonation can form meaningful phrases. For example:
• * "가가 가가?" which means "Are they the one we talked about?"
• * "가가 가가가" which means "Since they took it away"
• * "가가 가가가?" which means "Are they the one with the surname Ga?"

  German">German language">German

• A famous example for lexical ambiguity is the following sentence: "Wenn hinter Fliegen Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen nach.", meaning "When flies fly behind flies, then flies fly in pursuit of flies." It takes advantage of some German nouns and corresponding verbs being homonymous. While not noticeable in spoken language, in written language the difference shows: "Fliegen", being a noun, is written with a capital "F", whereas "fliegen", being a verb, is not. The comma can be left out without changing the meaning. There are several variations of this sentence pattern, although they do not work as smoothly as the original. Dutch language shares this same example, with the noticeable difference of not capitalising the initials of nouns, making it "Als achter vliegen vliegen vliegen, vliegen vliegen vliegen achterna."

  Dutch">Dutch language">Dutch

• Kees Torn expanded on the example given in the German section, from which he created: "Als, in de plaats waar van de makkelijk te zeven zeven zeven zeven zeven zeven zeven, Zeven, zeven zeven zeven zeven zeven, zeven zeven zeven zeven zeven." which uses the fact that zeven has multiple roles: it is a number, a verb, a plural noun and the name of a German town. As such the translation is: "If, in the town where the easy to sif sifs seven sifs sif seven sifs, Zeven, seven sifs sif seven sifs, seven sifs sif seven sifs".