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Writer's pictureGalina Blankenship

Usage Errors in Turkish (Anlatım Bozuklukları): Tautology & Pleonasm (Redundancy)

Updated: Dec 3

“You can observe a lot by watching.”
― Yogi Berra


Unintentional vs. Intentional Redundancies


Even though it's not regarded a grammatical mistake, a stylistic error may provoke mockery and ridiculing and cause more embarrassment than a misspelled word, a misordered sentence, or a misapplied comma. What makes matters even more confusing is that, while some stylistic redundancies may cause us to have a mild seizure, others leave us cold or go unnoticed. As it happens, repetitive (and redundant) expressions are abundant in our communication.


For example, we don't stop to wonder why we say a face mask (yüz maskesi) and not just a mask, even though the word mask comes from the French ‘masque’, meaning “a cover for the face, a false face”. Such commonplace expressions as bouquet of flowers (çiçek buketi), natural instinct (doğal içgüdü), empty space (boş alan), or annual anniversary (yıllık yıldönümü) are all technically redundant, and we all comfortably and regularly say “to ask a question” (soru sormak), “a new beginning” (yeni bir başlangıç), “for a brief moment” (kısa bir an), or “to book in advance” (önceden rezervasyon yaptırmak).


Many commonplace redundant expressions seem to be rooted in our fear of misunderstanding. After all, linguistic communication is often hampered by noises, dialectical differences, lacking attention, and misinterpretation, so it’s not surprising that languages have developed some degree of redundancy as an “insurance policy” and have a number of commonplace, unintentional, and acceptable redundancies. They may also be explained by our somewhat understandable impulse to add variation to, and prolong, some commonly used, innocent clichés of everyday life, so to speak.


Not all redundancies are innocent, however. Some, for instance, 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 bonus, free gifts, or the biggest hits. Therefore, once in a while, it is important to re-examine anything taken for granted to dust up one's preconceptions with mental clarity and precise articulation.


 

Redundancies: Tautologies vs. Pleonasms


Another term for a redundant expression is tautological or pleonastic. Both terms, in general, refer to repetitiveness, although in a slightly different way, which I explain in this post. However, the uses of these terms are not always consistent and properly differentiated in literature.


Generally, tautology refers to the repetition of the same word or phrase through rephrasing, or the repetitiveness of the same idea or statement through duplication in meaning, especially in the immediate context.


A variation of tautology, pleonasm typically refers to the use of an extraneous modifier that is already implied by the modified word. As such, both tautology and pleonasm are considered faults of style, or stylistic usage errors.


A painting "Seated Turk Smoking" depicting a Turk sitting on a low seat and smoking a long pipe by Eugène Delacroix
Seated Turk Smoking by Eugène Delacroix

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”). 


Tautologies may be lexical (repeated vocabulary), semantic (duplicated meaning), or grammatical (repetitive syntax). One of these expressions is usually redundant and can be removed. And 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 probably redundant!


yani ... daha açıkçası   OR     yani ... daha açıkçası

Romanlar mahzun insanı omuzları çökmüş, gözleri sönmüş, hareketsiz ve sessiz bir insan diye, yani daha açıkçası bir miskin şeklinde tasvir ederler.

Reşat Nuri Güntekin, Çalıkuşu

Revised 1:

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, their eyes extinguished—that is, as slugs.


Revised 2:

Romanlar mahzun insanı omuzları çökmüş, gözleri sönmüş, hareketsiz ve sessiz bir insan diye, daha açıkçası bir miskin şeklinde tasvir ederler.

Novels portray sad people as motionless and quiet, with their shoulders slumped, their eyes extinguished—in other words, as slugs.


 

anlamı ... demektir   OR      anlamı ... 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 principal meaning of this word is “bundle, bunch.”


Revised 2:

Bu söz, “demet, deste” demektir.

This word means “bundle, bunch.”


 

mecburen ... zorunda kalmak  OR     mecburen ... zorunda kalmak 

Mecburen karakola gitmek zorunda kaldım


Revised 1:

Karakola gitmek zorunda kaldım.

I had to go to the police station.


Revised 2:

Mecburen karakola gittim.

Inevitably, I went to the police station.


 

Another common redundancy occurs when there are two modifiers, an adjective and an adverb, that mean the same thing:


ana ... genellikle OR     ana ... genellikle 

 

Çocuklarda kaygıyı tetikleyen ana etmenler genellikle şöyledir.

(lit. The main factors that trigger anxiety in children are generally these.)


Revised 1:

Çocuklarda kaygıyı tetikleyen ana etmenler şöyledir.

The common factors that trigger anxiety in children include.


Revised 2:

Çocuklarda kaygıyı tetikleyen etmenler genellikle şöyledir.

The factors that tend to trigger anxiety in children include.


 

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 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.


 

sıkıntı ... sorun  OR sıkıntı ... sorun

Sıkıntı yaşadığınız en büyük sorun nedir?


Revised 1:

Yaşadığınız en büyük sıkıntı nedir?

What is your biggest concern?


Revised 2:

Yaşadığınız en büyük sorun nedir?

What is your biggest problem?


 
sorun ... mesele  sorun

Ama eğer sorun, Kürtlerin hiçbir surette hiçbir hakka sahip olamayacağı meselesi ise, o ayrı.


Revised:

Ama eğer sorun, Kürtlerin hiçbir surette hiçbir hakka olmayacağı ise, o ayrı.

But if the issue is that the Kurds will have no rights whatsoever, that's different.


 

ile ... beraber  ⟶ ile
ve ... hatta  ⟶ hatta

 

Genç adam, Seniha ile beraber iki ve hatta üç kadının bir arada idaresini o kadar müşkül bulmuyordu; onun belini büken şey, asıl kumardı.

Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu, Kiralık Konak  

Revised:

Genç adam, Seniha ile iki, hatta üç kadının bir arada idaresini o kadar müşkül bulmuyorduonun belini asıl büken şey, kumardı.

The young man could handle not only Seniha, but one more, even two more, women. What got him down was gambling.


 

👉 Some duplications in meaning, however, occur syntactically/grammatically due to the structure of the language and are inevitable, and therefore acceptable. To ensure mutual understanding between speakers who are never exactly the same in their ways of communication, languages have developed into a means of communication characterized by a great degree of grammatical redundancy.


 

Pleonastic Modifiers as a ‘Padding’ Device


A type 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 noun whose definition already implies the property expressed by such modifier. In some instances, a pleonastic expression may be acceptable if its purpose is rhetorical, that 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.

Nouns are what we name things around us; nouns are how we refer to things. As such, nouns 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, a whisper is quiet, etc. Nevertheless, we often emphatically overmodify these words in conversations and 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 a tautology, 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, similar expressions are 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), to which any nonfinal verb in the sentence becomes subjected to. Though some modifying verbals such as yapılan, bulunan, denilen, sağlanan rarely add anything substantial to the meaning of the constituents they modify, they are tempting and easy to insert 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 in common hundreds of years of history together.)


Revised:

Yüzlerce yıllık tarihi paylaşıyoruz.


 

aradan geçen 2 günün ardından ⟶ 2 günün ardından

 

Aradan geçen 2 günün ardından aynı güzergâhta Osman Taş (19) adlı gence araç çarptı.


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.

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 karşılama.

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.

Çağdaş Türk Romanı, ed. Yakup Çelik, 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 in self-actualization.


 

son yazdığı roman ⟶ son roman

Son yazdığı romanına isim bulmakta bir hayli zorlanmış.


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 not quite fitting:


romanlardan yapılan alıntılar ⟶  romanlardan alıntılar

 

Romanlardan yapılan alıntılarda üvey annelerin çocuklar tarafından pek sevilmediği görülmüştür.


Revised:

Romanlardan alınan alıntılarda üvey annelerin çocuklar tarafından pek sevilmediği görülmüştür.

Romanlardan alıntılarda üvey annelerin çocuklar tarafından pek sevilmediği görülmüştür.

The excerpts from the novels reveal that children tend to dislike their stepmothers.

Türk Kadın Yazarların Romanları

 

ilk tanışmamız ⟶ tanışmamız

Onunla ilk tanışmamızı unutamam.


Revised:

Onunla tanışmamızı unutamam.

I will never forget the first time we met.*


*Note the English translation of the verb tanışmak, which uses the adverbial modifier “the first time” because to meet can mean buluşmak, as well as tanışmak.


 

alçak sesle fısıldadı ⟶ fısıldadı  

Kulağına, eğilerek alçak sesle bir şeyler fısıldadı.


Revised:

Kulağına, eğilerek bir şeyler fısıldadı.

She leaned in and whispered something in his ear.


 

Commonplace Tautologies and Pleonasms


We use redundant expressions every day, in speech and writing, and there are numerous technically redundant but time-honored phrases in both English and Turkish. Most commonplace redundant expressions are either pleonastic modifications or tautological duplications.


Pleonastic modifications include noun phrases consisting of an adjective (modifier) and a noun (e.g., final ultimatum, brief summary, personal friend, empty hole, general public, future plans), some nominal compounds (e.g., biography of life, bouquet of flowers), verb phrases (grow in size, compete with each other, gather together, estimate at about, evolve over time, fly in the air, circle around, introduce for the first time), etc. Tautological duplications may include phrasal verbs (fall down, drop down, lift up, follow after, lag behind), the so-called hyponym compounds, or appositive bare-noun compounds, with the second noun conveying a set of which the first noun is a member (emergency situation, cash money, cameo appearance), other longer expressions (for the next discussion later on, as it has been previously found), etc. Or it feels somehow natural to say or write, there are various kinds/types of something, even though the modifier various shares its stem with the noun ‘variety’, a synonym of ‘kind’ or ‘type’. (So, we are basically saying, “there are varieties of kinds/types of something”.)


The examples below are in both English and Turkish (with the redundant constituents shown greyed out). Some are subtler than others or too established to ring any redundancy bells. What's fascinating, however, is the almost perfect bilingual matching of the phrases, which tells me that these are, indeed, semantic redundancies, that the duplication occurs at the level of meaning, and that some logical fallacies may be universal:

many different ways

birçok farklı yol

the usual habits

olağan alışkanlıklar

they are both the same

onların her ikisi de aynıdır

the past history

geçmiş tarihi

the past experiences

geçmiş deneyimleri

as it has been previously found

daha önce de belirtildiği gibi

the actual fact

asıl gerçek

a short summary

kısa bir özet

to summarize briefly

kısaca özetlemek gerekirse

in close proximity

yakın mesafede

more preferable

daha çok tercih edilir

arrived together with

ile birlikte geldi

a total sum

toplam tutar

a specific example

belirli bir örnek

they are both the same

onların her ikisi de aynıdır

a terrible tragedy

korkunç bir trajedi

a sad misfortune

üzücü bir talihsizlik

for the next discussion later on

daha sonraki tartışma için

cameo appearance

cameo görünümü

evening sunset

akşam gün batımı

morning sunrise

sabah gün doğumu

cash money

nakit para

during the period

dönem boyunca

for the duration of one hour

bir saat süresince

green in color

yeşil renkli

grouped together

birlikte gruplanmış

exact duplicate

tam kopya

small in size

küçük boyutlu

an armed gunman

silahlı tetikçi

a new recruit

yeni acemi

bouquet of flowers

çiçek buketi

annual anniversary

yıllık yıldönümü

advance warning

önceden uyarı

all-time record

tüm zamanların rekorunu

local residents

yerel sakinler

natural instinct

doğal içgüdü

serious danger

ciddi tehlike

sudden impulse

ani dürtü

frozen ice

dondurulmuş buz

face mask

yüz maskesi

future plans

gelecek planları

final ultimatum

son ültimatom

The phrases above are well-tolerated in conversations and informal, emphatic writing, or just tolerated by users and consumers. They are certainly fine in the emphatic context or in the register with the expressiveness turned up a notch. Interestingly, these are also fine in the legalese register, which, in English, has historically developed duplicating legal terms after the transition from the native English to French legalese.


 

🎭 Pleonastic and tautological expressions are often subtle, playing with words, and can be a source of witticisms and even catchphrases. Some of such catchphrases are attributed to Yogi Berra, an American professional baseball player and a very witty man. His laconic, clever jokes were often tautological and paradoxical, like truths “in a hurry”, as Berra’s biographer described them. They became popularly known as “Yogi-isms”:


  • “It ain't over ’til it's over.”

  • “The future ain't what it used to be.”

  • “It’s deja vu all over again.”

  • “You can observe a lot by watching.”

  • “Predictions are hard, especially about the future.”


 

In addition to the manipulative tactics by the marketing and advertising industries using the emphatic force of repetitions to stir up emotional feedback from consumers, other industries, such as journalese, corporatese, officialese, and legalese, where the form of expression may trumple its meaning are, too, occasionally “guilty” of repetitiveness:

Get a FREE GIFT with your qualifying order!

Uygun siparişinizle ÜCRETSİZ HEDİYE kazanın!

Bringing New Innovations to Your Enterprise!

İşletmenize Yeni Yenilikler Getiriyoruz!

You’re not limited to only what you could do before.

Yalnızca daha önce yapabildiklerinizle sınırlı değilsiniz.

They applied again with another product.

Başka bir ürünle tekrar başvurdular. 

There are plenty of redundancies in legalese, including many lexicalized (and irreversible) binomials (or legal doublets) consisting of synonyms or near synonyms, such as the well-known law and order, terms and conditions, cease and desist, by and between, for all intents and purposes, for and on behalf of, or null and void. Historically, English doublets were the product of the linguistic changes that the legal field underwent after the Norman Conquest, shifting from native English to French as the law language. To ensure understanding, the terms from both languages were, therefore, used.


Some 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

Regular Turkish, however, employs a very prolific strategy of duplication, or rather reduplication of words, partially or fully, to intensify the meaning of the duplicated word, to create a related but different meaning, or to emphasize the word.


 

Grammatical (Syntactical) Redundancies


In conversations, occasional redundancies are easily forgiven as common collocations in speech or as part of emphatic, emotional exchanges. It is in writing that we must be careful to avoid being repetitive or redundant, even though a certain amount of redundancy is built into languages, and some repetitiveness is 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. While the singular form is equivalent to the noun in its basic form (e.g., sun, apple, reply), the plural form is formed with the addition of the suffix -(e)s to the basic form of the noun (e.g., suns, apples, replies). For example, the singular forms are 1 sun, 1 apple, 1 reply. But the plural forms are 2 suns, 3 apples, 4 replies, including any count that is less than 1, such as “zero” (0), which agrees with a plural noun (if countable), e.g., they've received 0 replies. In other words, plural counts in English are expressed with two markers of the same thing: a plural numeral (≠1) and the plural suffix -s, which, technically speaking, is redundant. The Turkish language avoids such redundancy by not indicating the plurality of items when they are combined with a numeral, as in 1 elma, 2 elma, or 0 elma.


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.

It isn’t right to throw anything into the sea.

(lit. It isn’t right to throw nothing into the sea.)

Umarım, ne kadar zor olduğunu asla öğrenmezsin.

I hope you never find out how hard it is.

(lit. I hope you don’t 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 a stylistic usage error 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.


 

an icon depicting a red flower

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