“You can observe a lot by watching.”
― Yogi Berra (one of his catchphrases)
Types of Redundancies
When it comes to redundancy in writing, linguists differentiate between tautological and pleonastic redundancies. Although both terms refer to faulty stylistic repetitiveness, there is a slight difference in their uses, which I explain here. Although the terms are not always consistently applied in literature, I find them helpful in revealing the curious differences between the linguistic redundancies.
Tautologies ➢
Generally, tautology refers to the repetition of a word or phrase bu rephrasing it, or the repetitiveness in the immediate context of an idea or statement through duplication in meaning (tautological duplication). One important thing to keep in mind about tautological duplications is that they are a commonplace feature of any conversation—and often for good reason. In fact, in many cases, tautological repetitiveness is pragmatically and structurally justifiable, ensuring that we are able to communicate not only what we mean but also what we feel.
For instance, we often say and hear the technically tautological expression, Can you please repeat it again?, where the verb repeat is clearly duplicated by the adverbial again. Pragmatically, however, this tautology can be justified if we consider the structure of English, where the last word in a statement tends to be naturally emphasized. If we wish to stress the act of repetition (repeat), not the object of the repetition (it), we may wish to “insure” ourselves by adding after the “weak” it something that is repetitive of the verb—e.g., the adverbial again, which structurally comes at the end of the sentence and thus receives the intended emphasis.
Not all duplications are straightforward. Some work in a indirect, roundabout way. Indirect duplications may result from the combined effect of constituents that do not have direct phrasal connections, like again and another as in “The cabinet changes were again made the subject of another attack in the media”, or generally and main in The main factors that trigger anxiety in us generally include ...). Tautological duplication often occurs in English phrasal verbs (fall down, drop down, lift up, follow after, lag behind) and longer adverbial expressions (for the next discussion later on, as it has been previously found), etc.
In Turkish, a common tautological duplication may involve an instrumental adverbial conveyed through the use of the postposition ile (with) and the duplicating adverbial beraber/birlikte (together):
Kızım, bu kitapla beraber bütün seriyi okumuş oldu. Kızım, bu kitapla, bütün seriyi okumuş oldu. With this book, my daughter has read the entire series. | Oysaki bu dünyayı bu canlılarla birlikte paylaşıyoruz. Oysaki bu dünyayı bu canlılarla paylaşıyoruz. We share the Earth with all these creatures. |
Another duplication layer may be added by a verb that is formed with the reciprocal suffix -ış, as the sentences in the right column above illustrate. English, too, has analogous expressions, e.g., the verb phrase to gather together, where the meaning of the verb is duplicated by the meaning of the adverbial.
A Special Case of Tautology: “Telescoping” Constructions
Both English and Turkish have a large set of idiomatic constructions, which usually consist of two duplicating nouns, one of which is more specific in meaning than the other, more generic, one. Or we can say that the meaning of one noun is included in the meaning of the other noun, as in the so-called telescoping constructions that in Turkish progress from the narrower to the broader meaning. In English, the progression is reverse, from the broader to the narrower meaning. For example:
pazartesi günü or the day (of) Monday, where Monday is an instance of day
100 notu (yüz notu) or grade 100, where 100 is an instance of grade
“X” etiketi or label “X”, where “X” is an instance of label
2000 yılı or the year 2000, where 2000 is is an instance of year
Such constructions are built differently in the languages: Turkish uses one of its main phrasing mechanisms, compounding, linking the nouns as indefinite -si compounds. This establishes dependency and hierarchy between the constituent nouns: namely, the broadly defined Noun 2 (gün) functions as the head governing the more specific dependent Noun 1 (pazartesi), and Noun 1 (pazartesi) thus modifies Noun 2 (gün). On the other hand, Noun 1 is a specific case of Noun 2 so that the head represents a general category of the modifier. What's fascinating, therefore, is that in such compounds, due to the duplication in meaning and despite the dependency between the head and the dependent, the head appears to be redundant (as opposed to the more specific modifier), making it omittable without affecting the meaning of the expression. So, we can safely say pazartesi instead of pazartesi günü, 100 instead of 100 notu, “X” instead of “X” etiketi, or 2000 instead of 2000 yılı.
In English, the more general noun comes first, and it can also be omitted: e.g., Monday, 100, “X”, or 2000. The difference, however, is that the English nouns are not dependent as in a phrase or a compound but juxtaposed as in apposition. As such, they belong to the special category of title-appositives and oblique (non-possessive) of-appositives. Compare these constructions in both languages:
Turkish Telescoping Compounds Indefinite Noun Compounds (-si Compounds) (Noun 1 is included in Noun 2) | English Telescoping Appositives Title-Appositives + Oblique of-Appositives (Noun 2 is included in Noun 1) |
Title-Compounds (Noun 1 “names” Noun 2) | Title-Appositives (Noun 2 “names” Noun 1) |
“Shining” filmi ⟶ “Shining” Radikal gazetesi ⟶ Radikal Tokyo şehri ⟶ Tokyo sarı rengi ⟶ sarı ocak ayı ⟶ ocak .docx uzantısı ⟶ .docx | the film Shining ⟶ Shining the newspaper Radical ⟶ Radical the city (of) Tokyo ⟶ Tokyo the color (of) yellow ⟶ yellow the month of January ⟶ January the extension .docx ⟶ .docx |
Self-Referential Meta-Compounds (Words-as-Words) (Noun 2 clarifies and categorizes the use of Noun 1 as a signifier rather than a word) | Self-Referential Meta-Appositives (Words-as-Words) (Noun 1 clarifies and categorizes the use of Noun 2 as a signifier rather than a word) |
“güzel” kelimesi ⟶ “güzel” m harfi ⟶ m @ işareti ⟶ @ 2 rakamı ⟶ 2 | the word “beautiful” ⟶ “beautiful” the letter m ⟶ m the sign @ ⟶ @ the number 2 ⟶ 2 |
Content Compounds (Noun 2 “nominalizes” the content of Noun 1 (phrase/clause)) | Content Appositives (Noun 1 “nominalizes” the content of Noun 2 (phrase/clause)) |
gürültü problemi ⟶ gürültü kötülük kavramı ⟶ kötülük “Sigara İçilmez” levhası ⟶ “Sigara İçilmez” “Suçlu değilim!” iddiası ⟶ “Suçlu değilim!” “Teslim olmayın!” emri ⟶ “Teslim olmayın!” “Tanrı var mıdır?” sorusu ⟶ “Tanrı var mıdır?” | the problem of noise ⟶ noise the concept of evil ⟶ evil the sign “No smoking” ⟶ “No smoking” the claim “I am not to blame” ⟶ “I am not to blame” the order “Do not surrender!” ⟶ “Do not surrender!” the question “Does God exist?” ⟶ “Does God exist?” |
The redundant part of such constructions may be referred to as a (redundant) descriptor, which is a common phenomenon in Turkish, where such descriptors may appear as necessitated by their head function. Nevertheless, many of such descriptors are redundant in written Turkish: e.g., faaliyet (activity, effort), işlem (processing, procedure), yazı (writing, letter), olay (event, incident), bilgi (information), belge (document), etc.
Pleonasms ➢
A pleonasm is a particular case of tautological duplication, and it usually refers to the use of an extraneous modifier with a head (the modified) that already implies the meaning conveyed by the modifier.
In our daily lives, we are surrounded by pleonastic expressions, used by others or by us, and we rarely worry about their redundancy. Many expressions that are technically pleonastic have become historically lexicalized or somewhat lexicalized. For example, we don't stop to wonder why we say “a face mask” (yüz maskesi), and not just “a mask”, even though we use the word mask only in relation to faces. (I try to explain the reason later in the post.)
Likewise, natural instinct (doğal içgüdü), bouquet of flowers (çiçek buketi), brief moment (kısa an), or annual anniversary (yıllık yıldönümü) are all technically redundant phrases, just as are the phrases “to ask a question” (soru sormak), or “to book in advance” (önceden rezervasyon yaptırmak).
In English, pleonastic modifications may include noun phrases with somewhat redundant adjectives (modifiers) (e.g., final ultimatum, brief summary, personal friend, empty hole, general public, future plans), some nouns modified/qualified by an of-phrase (e.g., biography of life), and many modified verb phrases (grow in size, compete with each other, estimate at about, evolve over time, fly in the air, circle around, introduce for the first time).
Intentional & Unintentional Redundancies
A faulty style is not considered a grammatical error. Nevertheless, it can provoke ridiculing and cause even more embarrassment than a grammatical error (such as a misspelled word, a misordered sentence, or a misapplied comma). What's more, while some stylistic redundancies may cause us to have a mild seizure, others easily go unnoticed. As it happens, we use and encounter many repetitive (and redundant) expressions in our conversations and writing, both intentional and unintentional.
Some repetitiveness is justified by our fear of misunderstanding. After all, linguistic communication is often hampered by noises, dialectical differences, lacking attention, and misinterpretations. So, it’s not surprising that languages have developed some degree of redundancy as an “insurance policy,” having a number of commonplace acceptable redundancies.
Other, rather “innocent,” redundancies may be explained by our somewhat understandable impulse to add variation to, and prolong, some generic expressions. Seeking variety, we may opt for a grammatical form that has not yet been used. So, we can easily expand the generic noun phrase “personal advancement” with the duplicating in life, as in the “personal advancement in life”. Or it may feel natural to say or write about “various kinds of things”, even though the modifier various shares its stem with the noun ‘variety’, a synonym of ‘kind’ or ‘type’. (So, we are basically saying, “varieties of kinds of things”.) In the similar fashion, we may expand “looking for the right words” with the redundant kinds—resulting in the pleonastic “looking for the right kinds of words.”
Not all redundancies are innocent, however. Some are intentionally concocted by the machinery of obfuscating enticement churned by marketeers and “mad” admen. Regularly bombarded by the messages and imagery targeting our basic human emotions, we eventually stop noticing such otherwise obvious redundancies as extra bonuses, free gifts, or biggest hits. Tautology is common in brand names and ad slogans, including Natural Instincts (a very popular choice with “organic” hair products, pet foods, and, interestingly, dogs and tough men's trainers), Sudden Impulse (a “darling” of equestrian clubs), Frozen Tundra (a vaping product, a white wine brand), Safe Haven, or Ultimate Result.
It is, therefore, important that once in a while we reexamine anything we regularly say or hear, to dust up our preconceptions and to avoid the danger of taking things for granted, so that we can articulate ourselves with mental clarity and precision.
Tautology and Humor: Yogi-isms
Intentional tautological expressions are often used in humor. Taking the form of subtle and paradoxical witticisms, they tend to play with words and expectations. Some manage to become catchphrases, the expressions that got “caught in the popular fancy” (as aptly described by Sheridan Baker in The Practical Stylist).
Some of such catchphrases are attributed to Yogi Berra, an American professional baseball player, and, by all accounts, a very witty man. His laconic, clever jokes were often tautological and paradoxical, like truths “in a hurry”, as Berra’s biographer described them. His jokes became popularly known as “Yogi-isms”.
Here are some of them:
“It ain't over ’til it's over.” 👏
“It’s deja vu all over again.” 👍
“You can observe a lot by watching.” 😋
“Predictions are hard, especially about the future.” 🤘
Tautological Duplication in Meaning
The word ‘tautology’ is a compound of two words, tauto- (“the same”) and -logos (“saying”), used in Latin as tautologia (“representation of the same thing in other words”) and in Greek as tautologos
(“repeating what has been said”).
One of the duplicated constituents in tautological expressions is redundant and can be removed without affecting the meaning of the whole proposition. In other words, when it comes to stylistic usage, when something can be safely removed (that is, without affecting the meaning or the emotion intended to be conveyed), then it is most probably redundant!
Tautological expressions can be:
Lexico-semantic, when duplication occurs in the meaning of lexical constituents.
Grammatical, when duplication occurs in grammatical forms.
Lexico-Semantic Tautologies
Lexico-semantic duplications have an affinity with synonymity, which may not be immediately obvious if the duplication is expressed by constituents belonging to different grammatical categories, as illustrated by the following example where the duplicated expressions are başlıca (an attributive modifier, or an adjective), and genellikle (an adverbial modifier, or an adverb):
başlıca OR genellikle
Çocuklarda kaygıyı tetikleyen başlıca faktörler arasında genellikle genetik yatkınlık, stresli yaşam olayları, aile dinamikleri ve sosyal baskılar yer almaktadır.
(lit., The main factors that trigger anxiety in children generally include genetic predisposition, stressful life events, family dynamics, and social pressures.)
Revised 1:
Çocuklarda kaygıyı tetikleyen başlıca faktörler arasında genetik yatkınlık, stresli yaşam olayları, aile dinamikleri ve sosyal baskılar yer almaktadır.
The main factors that trigger anxiety in children include genetic predisposition, stressful life events, family dynamics, and social pressures.
Revised 2:
Çocuklarda kaygıyı tetikleyen faktörler arasında genellikle genetik yatkınlık, stresli yaşam olayları, aile dinamikleri ve sosyal baskılar yer almaktadır.
The factors that trigger anxiety in children generally include genetic predisposition, stressful life events, family dynamics, and social pressures.
As the examples below show, in some lexico-semantic duplications, selecting one (or either one) of the duplicated expressions may require additional rephrasing of the sentence to provide for the grammatical agreement, as shown in the next example. Here, the duplication occurs through the merging of a verb phrase (mecburen git-) and a verb compound (zorunda kal-):
mecburen git- OR zorunda kal-
Mecburen karakola gitmek zorunda kaldım.
Revised 1 (with additional rephrasing):
Mecburen karakola gittim.
I had to go to the police station.
Revised 2:
Karakola gitmek zorunda kaldım.
I had to go to the police station.
In such cases, selecting between the duplicated expressions may yield sentences with minor pragmatic, stylistic, or semantic differences. For example, in the sentence above, Revision 1 should be selected if the sentence is pragmatically linked with the previous sentence through the adverbial discourse connective mecburen. If no such connection is pragmatically required, then Revision 2 can also work.
In another example (below), the meaning is duplicated through the combination of the noun phrase sözün anlamı and the verb demek used in the idiomatic construction demek(tir). The difference between the revised sentences is that, with Revision 2, we cannot express the qualifying modification esas as in esas anlamı (the basic/essential meaning OR basically/essentially the meaning). If it is important to qualify the statement with a hedge, as often happens in polite speech, then we should go with Revision 1:
anlamı ... -dir OR ... demektir
Bu sözün esas anlamı “demet, deste” demektir.
Zülfikar (from Necmiye Alpay's Türkçe Sorunları Kılavuzu)
Revised 1:
Bu sözün esas anlamı “demet, deste”dir.
The essential meaning of this word is “bundle, bunch.”
(Basically, the meaning of this word is “bundle, bunch.”)
Revised 2 (with additional rephrasing):
Bu söz, “demet, deste” demektir.
This word means “bundle, bunch.”
The use of two synonymous nouns in the following sentence—sıkıntı (trouble, worry) and sorun (problem, concern)—should immediately raise a red flag. Indeed, the meaning is duplicated through the use of the modified verbal sıkıntı yaşadığınız in the relative clause sıkıntı yaşadığınız sorun (the problem you are having trouble with). Such sentences are typical of questionnaires, in which the verbal yaşadığınız is commonly used. In two revisions, we we can choose between sıkıntı or sorun:
sıkıntı OR sorun
Sıkıntı yaşadığınız en büyük sorun nedir?
(lit., What's the biggest problem you've experienced trouble with?)
Revised 1:
Yaşadığınız en büyük sorun nedir?
What is the biggest problem you've experienced?
Revised 2:
Yaşadığınız en büyük sıkıntı nedir?
What is the biggest trouble you've experienced?
Duplicated expressions are not always equally appropriate in the context: one of them may work better than the other one. In another example with two similarly synonymous constituents—sorun (problem, concern) and mesele (problem, issue)—only the first one fits:
sorun vs. mesele ⟶ sorun
Ama eğer sorun, Kürtlerin hiçbir surette hiçbir hakka sahip olamayacağı meselesi ise, o ayrı.
(lit., But if the issue is the problem of Kurds not having any rights whatsoever, that's different.)
Revised:
Ama eğer sorun, Kürtlerin hiçbir surette hiçbir hakka olmayacağı ise, o ayrı.
But if the issue is that Kurds might not have any rights whatsoever, that's different.
In contrast, in the example below, the first of the two duplications, ister istemez and zorunlu kil-, is a redundant modal adverbial that functions as the speaker's (parenthetical) comment and can be easily omitted, while retaining the unomissible duplicating secondary predicate zorunlu in the verbal complex zorunlu kil-:
ister istemez vs. zorunlu kıl- ⟶ zorunlu kıl-
Herkesin kendi yaşam tarzını bir kültüre dönüştürme durumu (postmodernite), ister istemez çoğulluk temelinde yükselen bir yapıyı (sivil toplum) zorunlu kılarken; o çoğulluklardan biri olan İslâm’a da her yaşam tarzı gibi kendini bir kültür olarak sunumlama imkânı sağlamaktadır.
(lit., Everyone transforming their own lifestyle into a culture (postmodernity) inevitably necessitates a structure that rises on the basis of pluralism (civil society). It also provides the opportunity for Islam, one of such pluralities, to present itself as a culture, just like every other lifestyle.)
Revised:
Herkesin yaşam tarzını bir kültüre dönüştürdüğü postmodern bir toplum, bir sivil toplum çoğulculuğunu zorunlu kılarken, bu çoğulculuklardan biri olan İslam'ın da diğer yaşam tarzları gibi, kendisini bir kültür olarak sunmasına olanak sağlar.
A postmodern society where everyone transforms their lifestyle into a culture necessitates a civic society pluralism. It also provides the opportunity for Islam, one of such pluralities, to present itself as a culture, just like another lifestyle.
The same seems to occur in another sentence (from Güntekin's Çalıkuşu), where one of the two duplicated expressions (the first one as well)—yani (that is, in other words) and daha açıkçası (more precisely)—works better in the context, even though either of them may be understood as a transitional expression connecting one clause to the previous one:
yani vs. daha açıkçası ⟶ yani
Romanlar mahzun insanı omuzları çökmüş, gözleri sönmüş, hareketsiz ve sessiz bir insan diye, yani daha açıkçası bir miskin şeklinde tasvir ederler.
(lit., Novels portray sad people as motionless and quiet, with their shoulders slumped and their eyes extinguished—that is, more precisely, as slugs.)
Reşat Nuri Güntekin, Çalıkuşu
Revised:
Romanlar mahzun insanı omuzları çökmüş, gözleri sönmüş, hareketsiz ve sessiz bir insan diye, yani bir miskin şeklinde tasvir ederler.
Novels portray sad people as motionless and quiet, with their shoulders slumped and their eyes extinguished—in other words, as slugs.
👉 In fiction, tautological expressions and other duplications may be acceptable if they are used for a humorous effect (as illustrated by the sentence below from Tanpınar's Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü) or an emphatic effect (as Elif Şafak demonstrates in the sentence below from her Aşk).
➢ By starting the sentence with the phrase that combines the inanimate viski and the tautological expression ile beraber, which is used more often with animate entities, Tanpınar achieves an anthropomorphizing effect, presenting viski as something, or someone, that is equally important as the person who brings it:
ile + beraber
Viski ile beraber Halit Bey de bize iltihak etti.
With a tumbler of whiskey already in his hand, Halit joined us.
Ahmed Hamdi Tanpınar, Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü
➢ In Elif Şafak's sentence below, the duplicated ve (and) and bir de (and/also) have the modal adverbial tabii (of course) inserted between them. It is not surprising. Although not marked by enclosing commas, tabii is semantically sentential (i.e., it modifies the entire sentence), expressing the speaker's comment about the said in the sentence. As such, the adverbial is parenthetical to the main clause, often pronounced with rhetorical pauses preceding and following it, which amplifies the emphatic effect generated by the duplicated conjunctions:
ve + (tabii) + bir de
Er ya da geç buluşmak vardı kaderimizde. Onu bulduğumda o derin, ela gözlerin neden öylesine mahzun baktığını öğrenecektim ve tabii bir de hazan mevsiminde bir gece yarısı nasıl öldürüleceğimi.
We were destined to meet sooner or later. At the meeting, I had to find out why those deep hazel eyes looked so sad, and, of course, how I would be killed at some autumn midnight.
Elif Şafak, Aşk
Grammatical Tautologies
Below is a very common example of a grammatical tautology, namely, a tautological fusion of two grammatical forms that mean the same thing:
bu sebepten dolayı OR bu sebepten dolayı (bundan dolayı)
Bu sebepten dolayı, vize başvurunuzu, I-20 belgenizi alır almaz yapmanızı öneriyoruz.
Revised 1:
Bu sebepten, vize başvurunuzu, I-20 belgenizi alır almaz yapmanızı öneriyoruz.
For this reason, we recommend that you apply for a visa as soon as you receive your I-20.
Revised 2:
Bundan dolayı, vize başvurunuzu, I-20 belgenizi alır almaz yapmanızı öneriyoruz.
Therefore, we recommend that you apply for a visa as soon as you receive your I-20.
Another, similar example below presents a variation of the same error. This is in addition to the poor reasoning in the sentence: paralysis is not a disease but a condition of the mobility loss, which may be caused by a disease, and it is highly unlikely to have multiple permanent disabilities resulting from the same condition (of paralysis).
sebep olabileceğinden dolayı ⟶ sebep olabileceğinden
Felç kalıcı sakatlıklara sebep olabileceğinden dolayı acil müdahale edilmesi gereken bir hastalıktır.
(lit., Paralysis is a disease that requires immediate intervention because it can cause permanent disabilities.)
Revised:
Felç, kalıcı bir sakatlığa sebep olabileceğinden, acil müdahale gerektirir.
Paralysis, which can cause a permanent disability, requires immediate intervention.
Another curious tautology I have encountered has to do with duplicating the passive suffix in composite verbs, i.e., the verbs consisting of two stems, with an additional mood stem of bil-, malı-, or -ver, -dur. For example, below a passive suffix is added to each of the stems in the composite verbs yapabilmek and pişirebilmek:
yapılabilinir ⟶ yapılabilir
Bununla birlikte, öğrencilerin armoni dersine ilişkin tutumlarının farklı demografik özelliklere göre değişip/değişmediğine ilişkin çalışmalar yapılabilinir.
(lit., In addition, studies can be conducted on whether students’ attitudes towards harmony lessons change/not change according to different demographic characteristics.)
Deniz Beste Çevik, “Armoni Dersine İlişkin Tutum Ölçeğinin Geliştirilmesi” (from Millî Eğitim)
Revised:
Bununla birlikte, öğrencilerin armoni dersine yönelik tutumlarının demografik özelliklerine göre değişip değişmediğine ilişkin çalışmalar yapılabilir.
In addition, studies can be conducted on whether students’ attitudes towards harmony lessons depend on their demographic characteristics.
Notice the revision in farklı demografik özellikler of the attribute farklı, which is probably one of the most common and commonly redundant adjectives.
pişirilebilinir ⟶ pişirilebilir
Arzum Okka Minio Jet Türk Kahvesi Makinesi ile 1-5 kişilik kahve pişirilebilinir.
With the Arzum Okka Minio Jet Turkish Coffee Machine, you can cook coffee for 1–5 people.
Revised:
Arzum Okka Minio Jet Türk Kahvesi Makinesi ile 1-5 kişilik kahve pişirilebilir.
Pleonastic Modifiers as a ‘Padding’ Device
A variation of tautology is pleonasm (from Greek pleonasmos “to be more than enough, to be superfluous,” “to add superfluously”), which tends to refer to a redundant modifier used with a word whose definition already implies the property expressed by such modifier. Pleonastic expressions, or pleonastic phrases, may be acceptable if its purpose is rhetorical, which is to amplify or to intensify the meaning.
One of the prevalent usage issues in Turkish is the excessive, redundant use of deverbelized verbal modifiers, due to their chameleonic ability to take the form of any other lexical constituents, including nouns, adjectives, and adverbials.
Because nouns are what we name things around us and how we refer to things in general, they often encode in their names their own descriptions, or definitions. For example, by definition, a life is something that is being lived; a secret is hidden, a scream is loud; or a whisper is quiet, etc. Nevertheless, we often emphatically overmodify these words in conversations, and even in writing. Although the ed-participle lived may be redundant in the lived life, it is perfectly fine in the well-lived life. Likewise, a hidden secret would normally be pleonastic, unless it's emphasized or otherwise contrasted with an open secret: e.g., The abuse quickly shifted from the hidden to the open secret.
In Turkish, pleonastic expressions are often created using Turkish verbal-participles (‑an, ‑dığı, ‑mış) or converbs (‑a, ‑ken, ‑arak, ‑dikçe), which owe their prevalence to the process of nominalization (or deverbalization). In Turkish, any nonfinal verb in a sentence becomes subjected to nominalization. Some modifying verbals rarely add anything substantial to the meaning of the constituents they modify, such as yapılan, bulunan, denilen, or sağlanan. They are tempting, however, as easy inserts into existing sentences, especially if one feels that the sentence is too short and needs some “padding”:
ortak tarihi birlikte paylaşıyoruz ⟶ tarihi paylaşıyoruz
Yüzlerce yıllık ortak tarihi birlikte paylaşıyoruz.
(lit., We share together hundreds of years of common history.)
Revised:
Yüzlerce yıllık tarihi paylaşıyoruz.
We share hundreds of years of history.
aradan geçen 2 günün ardından ⟶ iki günün ardından
Aradan geçen 2 günün ardından aynı güzergâhta Osman Taş (19) adlı gence araç çarptı.
(lit., After two days passed, a young man named Osman Taş (19) was hit by a vehicle on the same route.)
Revised:
İki günün ardından aynı güzergâhta Osman Taş (19) adlı gence araç çarptı.
Two days later, a young man named Osman Taş (19) was hit by a vehicle on the same route.
yapılan laboratuar çalışmaları ⟶ laboratuar çalışmaları
Türk alfabesinin harflerinden ğ, dilde (özellikle yazı dilinde) önemli işlevi olsa da, yapılan laboratuar çalışmalarına göre, bir sesbirimini karşılamaz.
(lit., Although, according to carried out laboratory studies, the letter ğ of the Turkish alphabet has an important function in the language (especially in writing), it does not constitute a phoneme.)
Türk Dili, Yazılı ve Sözlü Anlatım, ed. Nurettin Demir and Emine Yılmaz
Revised:
Türk alfabesinin harflerinden ğ, dilde (özellikle yazı dilinde) önemli işlevi olsa da, laboratuar çalışmalarına göre, bir sesbirimini karşılamaz.
Although, according to laboratory studies, the letter ğ of the Turkish alphabet has an important function in the language (especially in writing), it does not constitute a phoneme.
yazılan biyografik romanlar ⟶ biyografik romanlar
Edebiyatımızda yazılan biyografik romanlar genelde kendini gerçekleştirmeyi başarmış insanları konu alır.
(lit., Biographical novels written in our literature generally focus on people who have succeeded in self-actualization.)
Çağdaş Türk Romanı, ed. Yakup Çelik and Emine Kolaç
Revised:
Edebiyatımızda, biyografik romanlar genelde kendini gerçekleştirmeyi başarmış insanları konu alır.
In our literature, biographical novels generally focus on people who have succeeded to actualize their potential.
son yazdığı roman ⟶ son roman
Son yazdığı romanına isim bulmakta bir hayli zorlanmış.
(lit., He had a hard time naming the last novel he wrote.)
Revised:
Son romanına isim bulmakta bir hayli zorlanmış.
He had a hard time naming his latest novel.
The verbal used in the sentence is not only redundant, it's also illogical:
romanlardan yapılan alıntılar ⟶ romanlardan alıntılar
Romanlardan yapılan alıntılarda üvey annelerin çocuklar tarafından pek sevilmediği görülmüştür.
(lit., The excerpts made from the novels reveal that children tend to dislike their stepmothers.)
Türk Kadın Yazarların Romanları
Revised 1:
Romanlardan alınan alıntılarda üvey annelerin çocuklar tarafından pek sevilmediği görülmüştür.
The excerpts taken from the novels reveal that children tend to dislike their stepmothers.
Revised 2:
Romanlardan alıntılarda üvey annelerin çocuklar tarafından pek sevilmediği görülmüştür.
The excerpts from the novels reveal that children tend to dislike their stepmothers.
alçak sesle fısıldadı ⟶ fısıldadı
Kulağına, eğilerek alçak sesle bir şeyler fısıldadı.
(lit., She leaned in and quietly whispered something in his ear.)
Revised:
Kulağına, eğilerek bir şeyler fısıldadı.
She leaned in and whispered something in his ear.
ilk tanışmamız ⟶ tanışmamız
Onunla ilk tanışmamızı unutamam.
(lit., I will never forget our first meeting with her.)*
Revised:
Onunla tanışmamızı unutamam.
I will never forget the first time we met.*
*Note how the English translation can dispense with the potentially redundant adverbial with her, since it's already implied by the reciprocal verb tanışmak.
👉 The reciprocal verbs may become redundant when used with adverbial modifiers that also imply reciprocity, such as beraber (together) or aralarında (among them), as shown in the sentences below:
➢ The following sentence from Karaosmanoğlu's Kiralık Konak illustrates the commonly redundant use of ile and beraber:
Seniha ile beraber ⟶ Seniha ile
Genç adam, Seniha ile beraber iki ve hatta üç kadının bir arada idaresini o kadar müşkül bulmuyordu; onun belini büken şey, asıl kumardı.
(lit., The young man could handle two and even three more women together with Seniha. What got him down was gambling.)
Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu, Kiralık Konak
Revised:
Genç adam, Seniha ile iki, hatta üç kadının bir arada idaresini o kadar müşkül bulmuyordu; belini asıl büken şey, kumardı.
The young man could handle not only Seniha, but two, or even three, more women. What got him down was gambling.
➢ Without adding an emphatic effect, the adverbial aralarında (among them) seems redundant in the sentence below (from Pamuk's Benim Adım Kırmızı):
aralarında konuştukları ⟶ konuştukları
Bütün bu zaman boyunca Şevket ile Orhan'ın yukarıda aralarında konuştuklarını işitebiliyordum.
(lit., All the while I could hear Shevket and Orhan chattering with each other upstairs.)
Orhan Pamuk, Benim Adım Kırmızı
Revised:
Bütün bu zaman boyunca Şevket ile Orhan'ın yukarıda konuştuklarını işitebiliyordum.
All the while I could hear Shevket and Orhan chattering upstairs.
🚩 Notice that, without the postposition ile (with), the combined use of the reciprocal verbal konuştukları and the adverbial beraber (together) does not constitute a redundant expression, as illustrated by the sentence below. The meaning of ile in the relative clause son yılların vaziyetini daima beraber konuştukları İhsan (İhsan, with whom they discussed current events) is sufficiently conveyed by the adverbial beraber, so that the head noun of the relative clause İhsan remains non-case-marked as the subject of the main verbal clause Albert Sorel’in bu cümlesini İhsan sık sık tekrarlardı:
(ile) beraber konuştukları
“Dünya gömlek değiştireceği zaman hadiseler sakınılmaz olur.” Albert Sorel’in bu cümlesini, son yılların vaziyetini daima beraber konuştukları İhsan sık sık tekrarlardı.
“When the world is about to slough its skin, mayhem is inevitable.” İhsan, with whom he always discussed current events, would often repeat this quote by Albert Sorel.
Ahmed Hamdi Tanpınar, Huzur
👉 Some duplications in meaning, whether tautologically or pleonastically, may occur due to the structure of a given language, which makes them syntactically inevitable. As it happens, languages have developed into a means of communication characterized by a great degree of grammatical/syntactical redundancy to ensure mutual understanding between speakers who are never exactly the same in their ways of communication.
Commonplace Tautologies and Pleonasms
We use redundant expressions every day, in speech and writing, and there are numerous redundant yet time-honored tautological and pleonastic phrases in both English and Turkish, having lexicalized or semi-lexicalized by historical and societal forces.
Languages inherit and borrow numerous words from other languages during the periods of intense cross-cultural interactions, such as conquests, wars, or unifications. As most of such loanwords are nouns, some of them are retained as synonymous duplicates by being coupled with a native equivalent (or near-equivalent) to prevent any potential confusion that may be caused by a newly borrowed word/phrase, whether it is a common or a specialized expression. Duplication of meaning can thus be employed as an “insurance” against any potential misunderstanding, and any potential liability that may be caused by such misunderstanding. Linguists call such duplicated noun pairings binominals (twin nouns), or doublets.
Confusion may be especially costly in the legal and other technical contexts, which explains the high number of legal doublets as lexicalized (irreversible) binomials consisting of synonyms or near synonyms:
law and order | cease and desist | for all intents and purposes | null and void |
terms and conditions | by and between | for and on behalf of | final and conclusive |
Legal binomials can be found in Turkish as well (see below):
teşekkür ve şükran thanks and gratitude | yayın ve ilan promulgation | koşul ve şart terms and conditions |
In English, earlier legal doublets often combined a native Old English legal term and a newly borrowed Latin or French one. Other legal doublets that occurred later may combine an older Latin loanword and a newer French term, as shown in the table below:
final (French) and conclusive (Latin) | new (Old English) and novel (French) |
fit (Old English) and proper (French) | save (French) and except (Latin) |
Turkish, too, borrowed extensively from French, in addition to Arabic, Persian, and other contact languages, with some examples provided below:
müsait (Arabic) ve elverişli (Turkish) appropriate, fitting, suitable | fakir (Arabic) ve yoksul (Turkish) poor, impoverished |
merhamet (Arabic) ve acıma (Turkish) mercy, compassion | hürmet (Arabic) ve saygı (Turkish) respect, reverence |
In lexicalized binominals, the duplication of meaning through the use of synonymous nouns is explicit and justified as an “insurance” against any potential confusion. A somewhat similar duplication can also occur in lexicalized and semi-lexicalized noun compounds, when a modifier/qualifier becomes attached to a noun that already implies the meaning expressed by the modifying element.
For example, in the previously mentioned face mask, the seemingly duplicating face (which comes from the Old French ‘face’) qualifies the head noun mask borrowed from the Medieval French masque meaning ‘a cover to hide the face, a false face’. However, in this case, the qualifying/specifying face is used to discern a face mask—which in the post-pandemic context tends to be understood primarily as a protective mask—from other masks, such as a sleep mask, a diving mask, an oxygen mask, or even a facial mask (where facial is a qualifying noun referring to a skin treatment). In other words, although, technically speaking, the expression face mask is semantically a pleonasm, it is not redundant in its current usage: the word face does not so much qualify or specify its head as signals the historical context of the expression.
In stylistic usage, the context is essential. Without the context, the English and Turkish phrases and expressions in the table below are all technically tautological (with the technically redundant constituents shown in grey). Except for the journalistic clichés (e.g., an armed gunman, a local resident, a terrible tragedy), the phrases can be used in a context that justifies their redundancy. In most cases, the part that is technically redundant discontinues being so if it's pragmatically emphasized—as new or contrasted information, for instance. Depending on the context, we can juxtapose someone's unusual and usual habits, current as well as past experiences, or past versus future plans. As well as being frozen, the ice can be melting. Recruits can be old or new. If we emphasize the redundant modifier (shown in italics), we end up neutralizing the redundancy: “Group them together please!” The same can be achieved by adding another contrasting modifier (in italics): “The man was small in size, and virtue”.
What's fascinating about the expressions in the table below is the almost perfect bilingual matching between English and Turkish, which tells me that these are, indeed, semantic redundancies, that the duplication occurs at the level of meaning, and that some logical fallacies may just be universal. The expressions below are commonly used in the broadcasted, printed, and digital media, official documents, and casual conversations:
many different ways birçok farklı yol | usual habits olağan alışkanlıklar | past experiences geçmiş deneyimleri |
all-time record tüm zamanların rekorunu | actual fact asıl gerçek | cash money nakit para |
as it has been previously found daha önce de belirtildiği gibi | cacophony of sounds ses kakofonisi | small in size küçük boyutlu |
grouped together birlikte gruplanmış | arrived together with ile birlikte geldi | to summarize briefly kısaca özetlemek gerekirse |
serious danger ciddi tehlike | a specific example belirli bir örnek | annual anniversary yıllık yıldönümü |
more preferable daha çok tercih edilir | advance warning önceden uyarı | frozen ice dondurulmuş buz |
for the next discussion later on daha sonraki tartışma için | evening sunset akşam gün batımı | morning sunrise sabah gün doğumu |
local residents yerel sakinler | armed gunman silahlı tetikçi | a terrible tragedy korkunç bir trajedi |
a sad misfortune üzücü bir talihsizlik | sudden impulse ani dürtü | natural instinct doğal içgüdü |
new recruit yeni acemi | future plans gelecek planlar | final ultimatum son ültimatom |
The marketing and advertising industries expressly manipulate their audiences by using emphatically repetitive expressions and capitalizing on the emphatic force of repetitions to stir up emotional feedback from consumers:
Get a FREE GIFT with your qualifying order! Uygun siparişinizle ÜCRETSİZ HEDİYE kazanın! | Bringing New Innovations to Your Enterprise! İşletmenize Yeni Yenilikler Getiriyoruz! |
Failed to connect. Try again to reconnect in a few minutes. Bağlanılamadı. Birkaç dakika içinde yeniden bağlanmayı tekrar deneyin. | You’re not limited to only this. Yalnızca bununla sınırlı değilsiniz. |
Ads continually running in the backgrounds of our daily lives, however mindlessly repetitive and brazenly manipulative they may be, are easily turned into symbolic signs, or icons, which eventually become shared by all of us and too familiar for us to analyze or question.
Grammatical (Syntactical) Redundancies
In conversations, occasional redundancies are easily forgiven in collocations or emotional exchanges. It is in writing that we must be careful not to be repetitive or redundant, even though a certain amount of redundancy is inherently built into languages, making repetitiveness syntactically warranted.
Take the grammatical number, for instance. In grammar, only two numbers exist: one (=1) and non-one (≠1), which are presented as the grammatical categories of singular and plural, respectively. For countable entities, if the count is 1 (=1), the noun is grammatically singular; if the count is not 1 (≠1), the noun is grammatically plural, including for values less than 1 or equal to 0 (zero). While the singular form is equivalent to the noun in its basic form, as in 1 sun, 1 apple, 1 reply, the plural form is formed with the addition of the suffix -(e)s to the basic form of the noun, as in 2 suns, 3 apples, 4 replies, or 0 messages (zero should be understood grammatically, not mathematically, as “not any”, which agrees with a plural noun, as in not any messages). Even though the combination of a countable noun with any numeral other than 1 (≠1) unambiguously signals the plurality of the noun, in English we are grammatically required to add another plural marker (the plural suffix -s) to the noun. Having two markers of plurality in the same phrase makes one of them, technically speaking, redundant. What's more, some English sentences may have three plural markers, as in the sentence below:
Total 215 families were displaced by the recent hurricane.
The Turkish language avoids such redundancies by not indicating the plurality of nouns when they are combined with any numerals, as in 2 güneş, 3 elma, 4 yanıt, or 0 mesaj (hiçbir mesaj). The sentence above translated into Turkish, again, has only one plural marker expressed by the numeral:
Son kasırga nedeniyle toplam 215 aile yerinden edildi.
On the other hand, negation in Turkish is allowed to be redundant in double negative expressions. For example, in the sentences below, Turkish emphatically, and redundantly, uses two negation constructions, while English avoids such redundancy:
Hiçbir şeyin denize atılması doğru değil. (lit., It isn’t right to throw nothing into the sea.) It isn’t right to throw anything into the sea. | Umarım, ne kadar zor olduğunu asla öğrenmezsin. (lit., I hope you don’t never find out how hard it is.) I hope you never find out how hard it is. |
The existence and acceptance of some pleonastic constructs in both English and Turkish can be explained by the history and the structure of the languages. For example, because the following verbs are transitive (require objects), these repetitive expressions are not frown upon:
to sing a song | to live a life | to dance a dance | to drink a drink |
yemek yemek to eat | duygu duymak to feel | oyun oynamak to play | yazı yazmak to write |
soru sormak to ask | tutanak tutmak to take minutes | (bir) süre sürmek to last | sonunda sona ermek to finally end |
For the same reason, the seemingly pleonastic fare kapanı gibi kapanan below is not considered stylistically repetitive in Turkish:
Bu, beyaz gergin tenli, pembe yanaklı, fare kapanı gibi sımsıkı kapanan ince dudaklı, küçük kara gözlü bir kızcağızdı.
This was a pale girl, with rosy cheeks, thin lips that closed tightly like a mousetrap, and small black eyes.
Halide Edib Adıvar, Sinekli Bakkal
Furthermore, because a number of Turkish verbs are used as common bases for numerous verbal compounds and verbal phrases, such as et- (do), yap- (do), çık- (come out, exit), or gir- (come on, enter), such phrases and compounds are differentiated by the objects and adverbials they are combined with. Some adverbials, however, may duplicate the basic meaning of these verbs, such as dışarı (out) and içeri (in) when used with çık- and gir- respectively. Nevertheless, they are not considered redundant, since they help differentiate between the verb phrases using the same verb bases:
dışarı çıkmak to go out (lit., to exit [out]) | içeri girmek to come in (lit., to enter [in]) |
If, however, we add one more adverbial to the verb phrases above, the adverbials dışarı (out) and içeri (in) become redundant:
İşe gitmek üzere evden dışarı çıktı. İşe gitmek üzere evden çıktı. He left home to go to work. | Oya, kapıyı iterek açtı ve odama içeri girdi. Oya, kapıyı iterek açtı ve odama girdi. Oya pushed open the door and entered. |
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