The document discusses redundancy in language from multiple perspectives. It defines redundancy in grammar as features that are not necessary to identify linguistic units. In generative grammar, redundancy refers to language features that can be predicted based on other features. Common usage of redundancy refers to repetition of ideas or information within a phrase, clause, or sentence. The document provides examples of redundancy providing understanding even when parts of language are removed, due to the redundant nature of language. Redundancy can come from predictable spelling, grammar, or word order patterns that help anticipate the flow of language.

1. REDUNDANCY
By: Ibrahim Muneer

2. REDUNDANCY
• The term redundancy has more than one meaning.
(1) In grammar,redundancy generally refers to any feature of a language
that is not needed in order to identify a linguistic unit. (Features that are not
redundant are said to be distinctive.) Adjective: redundant.
(2) In generative grammar,redundancy refers to any language feature that
can be predicted on the basis of other language features.
(3) In common usage, redundancy refers to the repetition of the same idea
or item of information within a phrase, clause, or sentence: a pleonasm or
tautology.

3. EXAMPLES AND OBSERVATIONS
• "A sentence of English--or of any other language--always has more
information than you need to decipher it.This redundancy is easy to see.
J-st tr- t- r--d th-s s-nt-nc-. The previous sentence was extremely garbled;
all the vowel in the message were removed. However, it was still easy to
decipher it and extract its meaning.The meaning of a message can
remain unchanged even though parts of it are removed.This is the
essence of redundancy.“
(Charles Seife, Decoding the Universe. Penguin, 2007)

4. EXAMPLES AND OBSERVATIONS
• "Thanks to the redundancy of language, yxx cxn xndxrstxnd whxt x xm
wrxtxng xvxn xf x rxplxcx xll thx vxwxls wxth xn 'x' (t gts lttl hrdr f y dn't
vn kn whr th vwls r). In the comprehension of speech, the redundancy
conferred by phonological rules can compensate for some of the
ambiguity in the sound wave. For example, a listener can know that
'thisrip' must be this rip and not the scrip because the English consonant
cluster sr is illegal."
(Steven Pinker,The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language.
William Morrow, 1994)

5. EXAMPLES AND OBSERVATIONS
• "Redundancy can be something as simple as the u that tends to follow a q in English
(inherited from Latin),my saying 'PIN number,' or my reciting my phone number
twice when leaving you voicemail;or it may be something more complex,such as the
harmonious recurrences sewn into a poem.Generally,you need to pick up about
three words in ten to get an inkling of what a conversation is about; it is the lack of
redundancy in mathematics and its teaching that explains why so much maths
bewilders so many people.Redundancy can be rhetorical,but it can also be a
practical way of shielding meaning from confusion--a safeguard,a reassuring and
stabilizing kind of predictability."
• (Henry Hitchings,The LanguageWars. John Murray, 2011)

6. EXAMPLES AND OBSERVATIONS
• "Highly predictable phonetic elements, grammatical markers that all
must agree within a sentence, and predictable word-order constraints
can help one anticipate what is coming.These are all direct
contributors to redundancy."
(Terrence Deacon,The Symbolic Species:The Co-Evolution of Language
and the Brain. Norton, 1997)

7. THE LIGHTER SIDE OF REDUNDANCIES
• First and foremost, I hope and trust that each and every one of you
shares my basic and fundamental belief that needlessly repetitive and
redundant word pairs are not only troublesome and bothersome but
also vexing and irritating.We should, of course, be thankful and
grateful, not worried and concerned, when a thoughtful and considerate
teacher or editor makes a truly sincere effort to completely eliminate
any unnecessary and superfluous words from our written compositions.
Put another way, redundancies clog our writing and bore our readers. So
let's cut 'em out.

8. HTTPS://WWW.THOUGHTCO.COM/REDUNDANCY-GRAMMAR-AND-WORDS-1692029
Thank you