The Beijing 2008 Olympics start in 3 hours!
Time to sit back and play with some linguistics “puzzles.”
(For those of you unfamiliar, by the way, “James, while John had had ‘had had’, had had ‘had’; ‘had had’ had had a better effect on the teacher” is an infamous gramatically correct sentence demonstrating metalanguage and the importance of punctuation in resolving lexical ambiguity. Punctuation is added for clarity above. Now try this one: “That that is is that that is not is not is that it it is”, and then the famous, “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo” which is correct as it is).
And now some paraprosdokians:
“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing — after they’ve tried everything else.” — Winston Churchill
“We broke up because I caught her lying… under another man.” — Doug Benson
“If I am reading this graph correctly – I would be very surprised.” — Stephen Colbert
“I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.” — Will Rogers
And the avoidance of prepositions (The following statements are gramatically and formally correct. We’re usually wrong…):
The little girl says to her father, “For what did you bring that book that I did not want to be read to out of about Down Under?”
