Quote:

To me, not needed does not equate to useless. Just my opinion.

EDIT: does not always equate to useless.



I'm sorry, you have me confused. I haven't said that "redundant" meant "useless". The definitions I quoted all say that "redundant" means "more than is necessary, superfluous". My original question was whether that is actually true of a linguistic redundancy if it serves a useful purpose, specfically, removing ambiguity. If "redundant" means "not necessary, superfluous", and if a word's presence serves to elminiate ambiguity, then it is in fact necessary, not superfluous. I am unable to fathom how the concept of "uselessness" got dragged into this.
Even in the occupational setting I gave as an example, saying that a person is redundant for a particular task doesn't mean that he or she is useless. I certainly never said or implied an equivalence between "redundant" and "useless", and so don't understand why it keeps coming up here.

noho ora mai
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