Interpreting Tautological Constructions in Arabic and English
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1607.29Keywords:
tautologies, pragmatic view, semantic view, language specific, mediating positionAbstract
Tautologies are discussed extensively within the framework of two opposing views: the pragmatic and the semantic. The former view holds that tautologies are common across many languages and can be interpreted in a similar manner, while the latter contends that tautologies are language-specific, meaning that an accurate interpretation can only be obtained based on the language in use. This study explores the use of tautological constructions in Arabic and English by looking at areas of similarities and differences in both languages in terms of forms and functions. A corpus of 500 tautological utterances is collected in both English and Arabic. Numerous data collection tools are utilized, namely observation of dialogues taking place between individuals, a task requesting the participants to provide tautological expressions that they use in their daily life and referring to source books and research articles. The cross-linguistic comparison made in this study is limited to modern standard Arabic vs. modern written English to prevent confusion caused by mixing variants. To enrich the study, colloquial Arabic examples are used, but only within-Arabic illustrations, and are not compared directly to written English. The findings reveal that there are many areas of similarities between the tautological systems in English and Arabic, however, areas of differences transcend similarities by far. The differences are exhibited in both forms and functions in the sense that, in many cases, Arabic and English tautologies are formed differently. In addition, Arabic covers a broader spectrum of tautological functions than English, owing to Arabic’s heavy reliance on tautologies. The study lends support to the mediating position that some tautologies can only be interpreted within the context of a specific language, while others can be interpreted similarly across languages.
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