tautology or not?

Pos   Thu Jul 26, 2007 10:10 am GMT
Do you agree with is?

No tautology.

This is the place where I live.
This is the home where I live.

Tautology.

This is my home where I live.
furrykef   Thu Jul 26, 2007 2:06 pm GMT
Hmm. I suppose so. I have to admit that "This is the home where I live" sounds awkward to my American ears. I would normally say "house". If we did the same for the third sentence, though, I'd still consider it tautological, because the listener will take it for granted that the speaker lives in the house unless they indicate otherwise.

I think the third sentence needs a comma after "home" to be grammatical, though of course that won't turn it into a good sentence. Without it, "where I live" would be a restrictive clause, but the word "home" can't be restricted any further because when you say "my home", we're already talking about one specific home.

By the way, I wasn't aware that "tautology" could be used to refer to redundancies like that, but I looked it up and it turns out it can... I was only familiar with "tautology" in the logical sense, where one thing defines itself, or two things mutually define each other, etc. A trivial example is, "A tautology is a tautology." The statement must be true regardless of how "tautology" is defined, because something will always be itself.

- Kef
Pos   Thu Jul 26, 2007 2:27 pm GMT
<Hmm. I suppose so. I have to admit that "This is the home where I live" sounds awkward to my American ears. I would normally say "house".>

I meant "home" in the sense of establisment for say, the elderly, foster-children, vagrants, et.
Pos   Thu Jul 26, 2007 2:32 pm GMT
<I meant "home" in the sense of establisment for say, the elderly, foster-children, vagrants, etc. >

When I wrote "the home", that is.
furrykef   Thu Jul 26, 2007 2:35 pm GMT
Ah, I hadn't considered that. It sounds fine in those contexts.