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conulyWe'd take turns coming up with phrases like "wet water" and "Catholic nun" (well, until I learned about the Buddhist ones and trounced everybody with that fact) and so on. It wasn't until I was much older that I realized that the more common term for these is "redundant phrases", which just goes to show that by using a bigger word instead of a smaller one you're not actually making your children more knowledgeable. If they only know one word for a furry creature that purrs and says meow, far better for that word to be "cat" than the less specific "feline"!
But I digress.
This game, aside from leaving me with a vaguely defined distaste for the phrase "I saw it with my own eyes"! (that's a twofer!) has meant that I still, years later, am inclined to say something every time a new redundant cliche springs to my attention.
Some might say it's obnoxious of me to point out to people that, if there is no such thing as "a moment in space" or "a moment in Jello" or "a moment in momentariness" it's just a waste of breath to specify "a moment in time" every time you refer to moments. Those people are probably right, but, nevertheless this could all be avoided if people just agreed I'm right on this subject and they're wrong. (Or, maybe, if we'd just stuck to national capitals at mealtime. Knowing that Lisbon is the capital of Portugal may be totally worthless, but that's only because it comes up so rarely that I never feel the need to interject it into the conversation.)
Parents - don't do this to your kid! Sure, they tell you that stimulating dinner conversation leads to better grades, but at what cost? Better to raise somebody totally ignorant! (Also, books. Who needs 'em? All I've ever gotten from reading three books a day is people come up to me and say inane things like "You're always reading!" like I somehow missed this important fact about myself.)
Oh, and more importantly: A moment in time? Seriously? Stop doing that. It makes me twitchy.
But I digress.
This game, aside from leaving me with a vaguely defined distaste for the phrase "I saw it with my own eyes"! (that's a twofer!) has meant that I still, years later, am inclined to say something every time a new redundant cliche springs to my attention.
Some might say it's obnoxious of me to point out to people that, if there is no such thing as "a moment in space" or "a moment in Jello" or "a moment in momentariness" it's just a waste of breath to specify "a moment in time" every time you refer to moments. Those people are probably right, but, nevertheless this could all be avoided if people just agreed I'm right on this subject and they're wrong. (Or, maybe, if we'd just stuck to national capitals at mealtime. Knowing that Lisbon is the capital of Portugal may be totally worthless, but that's only because it comes up so rarely that I never feel the need to interject it into the conversation.)
Parents - don't do this to your kid! Sure, they tell you that stimulating dinner conversation leads to better grades, but at what cost? Better to raise somebody totally ignorant! (Also, books. Who needs 'em? All I've ever gotten from reading three books a day is people come up to me and say inane things like "You're always reading!" like I somehow missed this important fact about myself.)
Oh, and more importantly: A moment in time? Seriously? Stop doing that. It makes me twitchy.
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Date: 2012-07-18 03:34 pm (UTC)(Lamentably, I also suffer from the same urge to pedantry.)
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Date: 2012-07-18 03:34 pm (UTC)"In mathematics, a moment is, loosely speaking, a quantitative measure of the shape of a set of points...."
(grin)
What we did at the dinner table was use a variety of languages. No specific rules, but using English was admitting defeat and dropping down the pecking order. French was the norm, then Latin, then German (those being what we learnt in school, in order), and some Russian, Mandarin Chinese and Arabic got dropped in from time to time. Extra respect given for multi-lingual puns.
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Date: 2012-07-18 03:37 pm (UTC)Speaking multi-lingually sounds fun : )
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Date: 2012-07-19 08:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-18 03:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-18 03:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-19 11:01 am (UTC)Or, a 'moment' is a period very short compared to the full length of whatever it's a 'moment in.' 'A moment in the play' might be one minute out of an hour long play. 'That moment in the war' might be several days or a week. Then, 'a moment in time' might be one special decade out of a quite long, though unspecified, history.
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Date: 2012-07-18 03:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-18 06:44 pm (UTC)But even the modified "if I saw it, I saw it with my own eyes" is not a tautology or even redundant in a self-contained way. Seeing with someone else's eyes or with something other than eyes is not a logical impossibility. (Given the existence of technology like this it's probably not a practical impossibility either.) Rather, the bit about "seeing with one's own eyes" is redundant only with common knowledge about how humans (usually?) see. In some contexts, it wouldn't be redundant at all.
Putting aside implausible scenarios, "I saw it with my own eyes" isn't necessarily redundant relative to "I saw it" (though it may convey the same information as "I saw it with my eyes" or "I saw it personally" or "I saw it myself" or "I literally saw it"). The additional information conveyed is that the speaker is not using "saw" in a figurative sense.
(Though most of the time people use that phrase, they are just being redundant for emphasis.)
Whether "(liquid) water is wet" is a tautology is actually the subject of an ongoing philosophical debate. (Not even kidding.)
"Moment" has all sorts of meanings, but people generally aren't saying "moment in time" to disambiguate. Rather, they're making it clear that they're talking about a moment contrasted with all time (or some long span of time). It's poetic imagery. There's a reason why you don't hear that phrase in the context of, say, asking someone to wait while you tie your shoelace ("hang on just a moment in time"). The two phrases generally have radically different connotations: "a moment" is insignificant, "a moment in time" is a thing to be treasured.
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Date: 2012-07-18 11:21 pm (UTC)That's just what we called it, though.
Putting aside implausible scenarios, "I saw it with my own eyes" isn't necessarily redundant relative to "I saw it" (though it may convey the same information as "I saw it with my eyes" or "I saw it personally" or "I saw it myself" or "I literally saw it"). The additional information conveyed is that the speaker is not using "saw" in a figurative sense.
An interesting point... but, like you said, not generally relative to how most people talk.
Whether "(liquid) water is wet" is a tautology is actually the subject of an ongoing philosophical debate. (Not even kidding.)
...
what? Wait, no, seriously, what? I'm not being sarcastic in any way, but... what?
"Moment" has all sorts of meanings, but people generally aren't saying "moment in time" to disambiguate. Rather, they're making it clear that they're talking about a moment contrasted with all time (or some long span of time). It's poetic imagery. There's a reason why you don't hear that phrase in the context of, say, asking someone to wait while you tie your shoelace ("hang on just a moment in time"). The two phrases generally have radically different connotations: "a moment" is insignificant, "a moment in time" is a thing to be treasured.
Maybe, but I reserve the right to still be annoyed about it.
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Date: 2012-07-18 11:48 pm (UTC)My recollection was off a little, the real subject of that question was whether "water is H2O" was a tautology (i.e. necessary instead of contingent). See for example this and this.
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Date: 2012-07-20 08:32 am (UTC)You can follow that link to find out how many atoms are in an ounce of time.
* Of course, the word no longer has that meaning, any more than the word "decimated" means "1 in 10 killed off" or any more than December is still the tenth month.**
** The Romans used to begin their New Year on the first of March, so December was, at that time, the tenth month of the year. If you've ever wondered why September, October, November, and December were so weirdly misnamed, well, there you go.
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Date: 2012-07-19 02:05 am (UTC)Everybody who ever read Pippi Longstocking knows that Lisbon is the capital of Portugal. Pippi knew it too, because she'd been to Lisbon with her Papa, but her reply on being asked the question was nothing short of brilliant. Anyway, I thought we invented books and computers so we wouldn't HAVE to go around remembering all this trivia all the time, but rather could just look it up if we ever actually needed it.
I'm not 'always' reading. Sometimes I'm writing, sometimes I'm playing music, sometimes I'm dancing, sometimes I'm pulling weeds, washing dishes, snuggling my kitteh, walking on the beach, driving around with my daughter - I read a lot, but I also do plenty of other things. What I DON'T do is: watch television, play games (except chess,) dowload music, shop recreationally, follow sports or celebrities, or have a boyfriend. This frees up a lot more time for reading than most people get.
Also, of course, I'm addicted to it, and can hardly eat a snack by myself without a book in my face. My kid's turned out just the same, too. I'm glad, because I'd have been bored out of my skull bringing up a totally ignorant child.
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Date: 2012-07-19 07:22 am (UTC)Yes, but the difference between moments and pebbles (I mean, aside from the obvious) is that pebbles exist in lots of places but moments really don't. (Except for people who use the word in odd, specialized ways, but honestly, although it's arrogant of me, I kinda suspect that if I didn't know those other meanings of the word, most people don't either.)
I'm glad, because I'd have been bored out of my skull bringing up a totally ignorant child.
You'd've made do if the kid really couldn't stand reading.
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Date: 2012-07-20 09:15 pm (UTC)