Talk:Redundancy (linguistics)

Function of redundancy

This page fails to address the role and necessity of redundancy in human language. -- anon.

It does need some work. I hope to improve all of the related pages on this general topic, including this one, pleonasm, and tautology fairly soon.

angle

It bothers me a little that the computer-programming angle of functional redundancy, as it were, is given top billing here. While it's an important issue, redundancy as the scourge of bad prose needs to be highlighted, IMV. I've written about this at User:Tony1/How_to_satisfy_Criterion_1a#Eliminating_redundancy. Should this be linked? Should some of the points I make be included here as well? Tony 05:12, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Single-Word Redundancies

May I suggest the addition of a section on words that are redundant or unnecessary within themselves, due to an unneeded prefix or suffix? Someone above mentioned reduplication, as opposed to duplication. Some words that make me cringe are...

• crispy, which means crisp
• irregardless / regardless
• prerecorded / recorded
• secondly / second (except in those rare occasions when secondly really is an adverb)
• thermonuclear / nuclear (Don't all nukes generate immense heat upon detonation?)
• thusly / thus
• usage / use
• wrongful / wrong

--His Manliness (talk) 18:12, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

• inflammable / flammable WHPratt (talk) 23:06, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

On the contrary, it's flammable that is missing the prefix in-, corresponding to the words "set on" in to set on fire. JudahH (talk) 06:16, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Triply redundant taqueria sign

I only see two redundancies in this sign "Pepe's Mexican Taqueria" and they are both dubious. "Mexican taco" is not necessarily redundant. It could be used to distinguish an authentic Mexican style taco from an Americanized taco. I do not see how the proprietor of a taqueria having a stereotypical Mexican or Hispanic name adds redundancy. If Pepe's Mexican Taqueria is still in business, this image could be construed as an advertisement for the business, especially since it contains a telephone number. For multiply redundant phrases, I personally prefer when a leading newspaper referred to a "deliberately set arson fire."

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.141.91.42 (talk) 04:03, 2 November 2011 (UTC) 

Agreed this is stereotypical and not necessarily redundant. I will remove it. Tomsv 98 (talk) 16:51, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

My favorite example is Raid kills bugs, dead, forever. Obviously there are copyright issues with showing that image. Tomsv 98 (talk) 18:21, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

"My Autobiography"

Charlie Chaplin entitled his life story My Autobiography. (As if you can write somone else's autobiography.) WHPratt (talk) 14:39, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

German image

The caption for the image in the article tells us it is a "redundant road sign" with no further explanation. As it is in German, it's not a very helpful example for an English language encyclopedia... Jellyman (talk) 14:01, 27 January 2018 (UTC)