Would the sentence, "I put dashes between Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish And Chips sign" be clearer if I put commas between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips?

As for is, it is kind of cheating, but, "Is is is?" is "Is is is?"

However the real record holder is buffalo. Buffalo can mean the city, the animal, or "to bewilder and confuse". Between those three meanings you can always find a correct gramatical parse for the word Buffalo, repeated any number of times. For instance, Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo! means "Buffalo buffalo bewilder and confuse buffalo that bewilder and confuse Buffalo buffalo."

but, "Is is is?" is "Is is is?"

Didn't Clinton base his whole defense on that? :-)

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I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. flash japh

There is a very nice discussion of this in The Language Instinct. My office mates and I sometimes mutter this at each other when the discussion has gotten overly abstract :)

Another one I like from there is "Bulldogs bulldogs bulldogs fight fight fight!" The yale cheer (and also a grammatical sentence). Theoretically this can be embedded as many times as you want and still be grammatical, but the human grammar processor is typically incapable of more than three levels of embedding.

James, while John had had "had" had had "had had". "Had had" had had a better effect on the teacher.

That's seven hads in a sentence, with eleven across a sentence break.

The original I heard was "John where Jim had had had had had had had."

Then, there was the proposal that a second John and Jim had been given this sentence to punctuate, and the second John had given up in disgust:

John, where Jim had had, "John, where Jim had had 'had', had had 'had had'", had had "John where Jim had had had had had had had".

It's probably time to let sleeping hads lie at this point.

Update:The contents of this post are a work of fiction, for amusement purposes only.

Any correspondence between concepts and constructs it contains and any real literary entities of similar name or form are purely coincidental, as the author hasn't got a clue!

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That that is one of the words that can be grammatically correctly abutted within a sentence is no surprise, as just demonstrated.

And and can also be so abutted.

In these usages of that that, and and and, the first repetition is referring directly to the second.

But that that that and and and, are not the end to these linguistic anomalies.

He said the matter was closed, and that that should be an end to it.

In this usage, the first that is not referring to the second that.

Once the sentence itself starts both using this phenomena and referring to it, the 'that that', that that 'that that' is referring to can itself become self-referential, with the consequence that that, that that, that that, that that refers to, tends to become obscured.

However, is it a matter of speculation whether is, is another word that can be so abutted?

Apparently not :)

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Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.

Lingua non convalesco, consenesco et abolesco. -- Rule 1 has a caveat! -- Who broke the cabal?

"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".

In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

Is can follow a different pattern.

Is is is?

"Is is is?" is "Is is is?"

"'Is is is?' is 'Is is is?'" is 'Is is is?' is 'Is is is?'"

"'"Is is is?" is "Is is is?"' is '"Is is is?" is "Is is is?"' is '"Is is is?" is "Is is is?"' is '"Is is is?" is "Is is is?"'"

etc.

(Note that parsing grammatically correct English sentences is an NP hard problem.)

He said the matter was closed, and that that should be an end to it.

The word 'that' is one of the only words I can think of that I dislike. There are so many instances where I'm not sure whether including the word is necessary or even gramatically correct. I tend to understand the concept behind doubling the word 'that', as in my quoted example. The second occurance of the word in this case is referring back to the previous sentence (or rather, the object or idea to which the speaker is referring to as being the last item being spoken about the matter).

I am trying to think up a simple sentence where the word 'that' can be used, but seems to make the exact same sense if you pull the word out. I come across these a lot when writing, but can't seem to invent one now. I bet this issue is dealt with in university English classes at some point :)