The status of redundant expressions in a comparative perspective
The status of redundant expressions in a comparative perspective

Summary/Abstract: This paper examines the question of semantic and pragmatic aspects of the functioning of pleonastic expressions. The question of pleonasticity understood as redundancy on the part of the sender has not been investigated sufficiently by linguists and is still an actual problem for contemporary linguistics. The basic problem is the difficulty of formulating the definition of the term pleonasm and differentiating it from the notion of tautology. Another important question is the normative valuation of pleonasms. The phenomenon of pleonasticity corresponds with the problem of blurriness of the borders between semantics and pragmatics. A contrastive analysis of pleonastic constructions of the vector type in various Indo-European languages indicates the existence of a general and communicative tendency for semantic redundancy.

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