#158510 - 04/19/06 09:07 PM
Re: Minggu is also the word for week
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 07/20/03
Posts: 3230
Loc: Te Ika a Maui
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Quote:
I didn't know that redundant carried the connotation of uselessness. Duplication, yes, but not automatically useless...? That's pretty awful, given that you Brit-speakers say that someone who has been what we call laid off has been made redundant. 
Well, here's what M-W, a USn dikshunry if I'm not mistaken, offers for "redundant":
Quote:
a : exceeding what is necessary or normal : SUPERFLUOUS b : characterized by or containing an excess; specifically : using more words than necessary c : characterized by similarity or repetition *a group of particularly redundant brick buildings* d chiefly British : no longer needed for a job and hence laid off
The definitions above are the ones that I'm familiar with, and all carry more than merely a sense of duplication. They all suggest an element of being unnecessary. Hence the employment sense - "we have 4 cleaners and need only three. One of you is redundant." It's really the same meaning as in the definitions listed before it, afaict.
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#158513 - 04/19/06 09:30 PM
Re: Minggu is also the word for week
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 07/20/03
Posts: 3230
Loc: Te Ika a Maui
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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.
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#158515 - 04/19/06 09:45 PM
Re: Minggu is also the word for week
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 07/20/03
Posts: 3230
Loc: Te Ika a Maui
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Quote:
I jumped to that conclusion from your saying It just got me wondering whether such a device really deserves to be called redundant if it is actually serving a useful purpose. If something is not actually serving a useful purpose, I thought you meant that it was useless. Sorry; apparently that was an incorrect assumption.
Indeed it was. It is very easy for something to be unnecessary without being useless.
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#158516 - 04/19/06 11:29 PM
Re: Minggu is also the word for week
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 08/13/05
Posts: 3290
Loc: R'lyeh
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And redundancy is important in language. Has something to do with information theory.
_________________________
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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#158517 - 04/19/06 11:54 PM
Re: Minggu is also the word for week
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Pooh-Bah
Registered: 03/14/01
Posts: 2379
Loc: New York City
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Interesting, Max. I'd always thought of "redundant" as meaning repetitious, not superfluous. Repetition, then, does not necessarily involve superfluity; so that, as you say, it is not necessarily redundant. Hmm.
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