Buffalo people buffalo people
I saw Greenberg a little while ago, and the “Hurt people hurt people” line really stuck with me. Not the sentiment, but the language. It’s a pretty gorgeous construction. There are very few verbs where the bare form is the same as the past participle, and even when that happens, you still need a transitive verb that can take the same type of subject and object (“Put people put people” doesn’t make any sense, for instance).
I searched a list of irregular verbs and came up with the following:
- Cut people cut people.
- Hit people hit people.
- Fit people fit people.
- Broadcast people broadcast people.
Not nearly as good. Of course, if you don’t care about a generic reading, we can just change the tense to the past and get all sorts of stuff. Consider a situation in which disoriented men and women began saying gibberish, which then disorients the others around them. It seems appropriate to describe that situation as:
- Confused people confused people.
And since the past participle and past tense almost always agree, examples like this will show up all over the place.
Much more fun: is when you use homophonous homonyms, or nouns with a related verb sense. Here are a three with animals:
- Residents of a city in upstate New York are bullies: Buffalo people buffalo people.
- Canine pet owners are persistent: Dog people dog people.
- Ursine-human hybrids have a tendency to carry regular humans: Bear-people bear people.
And best of all, I have constructed a buffalo sentence! Consider a situation in which extroverts are perpetually living inside other human beings. Then we’d definitely want to say:
- People people people people.
