Who polices Internal Affairs? Internal Affairs-police police Internal Affairs.
As I used a hyphen myself in that sentence, you could make a decent argument that English requires a bit more punctuation in the original sentence. It certainly allows it.
Actually, I don't believe it relies on unmarked compounds, or, indeed, adjectives at all. This is mentioned in point 3 in the linked article, but was surprised to see people in the email threads (e.g. Neuner) not get this.
Basically, as I understand it, there are three rules to make this continue indefinitely, using only nouns and verbs:
Rule 1: Any noun or noun-phrase can be made into a sentence by placing a verb at the end.
e.g. "Police police" is a sentence. What do police do? They police. We could also say "Cops police." Likewise it works with noun-phrases: "[Eager cops] police."
Rule 2: Any Noun phrase + Transitive verb sentence can have a noun placed at the end, as the object of the action.
e.g. "Police police police." Who do cops police? Other cops. Similarly: "Detectives investigate criminals."
Rule 3: The object of any sentence of the form above can be re-arranged by placing the object in front, to form a noun-phrase with the same number of words:
"Detectives investigate criminals" => "Criminals detectives investigate... [tend to get caught]". This can also be phrased as "Criminals THAT detectives investigate" for clarity, but the THAT is unnecessary in English.
"Police police police..." => "Cops THAT cops police... [tend to quit their jobs]
This forms a new noun phrase (a sentence fragment) that you can apply rule #1 to, and then continue indefinitely from there.
To apply these three rules up to seven words:
"Police police police: ("Cops police cops").
"Police police police police" ("Cops cops police police"): Turn the object of the sentence above into a noun phrase, from rule 3: "Cops (THAT) other cops police...", and add a verb (Rule 1): "The cops THAT other cops police, themselves police.
"Police police police police police" ("Cops cops police police cops"): Who do they police? Other cops. (Rule 2)
"Police police police police police police" ("Cops cops cops police police police"): (Rearranged noun phrase, from rule 3: The policemen (from the line above above) THAT are policed by cops that are themselves policed by cops) + (Rule 1 Verb: themselves police).
"Police police police police police police police" ("Cops cops cops police police police cops"): ... and who do they police? Other cops. (Rule 2)
...Anyway, this is how I worked it out myself, when trying to understand the buffalo sentence, and then was always very disappointed to find the variation with the capitalized "Buffalo" adjective being touted as the canonical one, since it always seemed less interesting to me.
I agree with you. This is the most profound way to interpret these kinds of sentences, and it exemplifies a consequence of how English allows you to omit the "that" in dependent clauses.
Who polices Internal Affairs? Internal Affairs-police police Internal Affairs.
As I used a hyphen myself in that sentence, you could make a decent argument that English requires a bit more punctuation in the original sentence. It certainly allows it.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_affairs_(law_enforcem... , for those who don't watch as much police drama as my family does, or who live in a place that calls it something different.