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Semantic pleonasm is a question more of style and usage than of grammar. [16] Linguists usually call this redundancy to avoid confusion with syntactic pleonasm, a more important phenomenon for theoretical linguistics. It usually takes one of two forms: Overlap or prolixity. Overlap: One word's semantic component is subsumed by the other:
In Latin, an example of litotes can be found in Ovid's Metamorphoses: non semel (bk. 1 ln. 692, 'not one occasion'), meaning 'on more than one occasion'. Some common words are derived from litotes: nonnulli from non nulli ('not none') is understood to mean 'several', while nonnumquam from non numquam ('not never') is used for 'sometimes'.
Variation is a characteristic of language: there is more than one way of saying the same thing in a given language. Variation can exist in domains such as pronunciation (e.g., more than one way of pronouncing the same phoneme or the same word), lexicon (e.g., multiple words with the same meaning), grammar (e.g., different syntactic constructions expressing the same grammatical function), and ...
Comparison can also, however, appear when no adjective or adverb is present, for instance with nouns (e.g., more men than women). However, the usage of the word than between nouns simply denotes a comparison made and not degree of comparison comparing the intensity or the extent of the subjects. One preposition [dubious – discuss], near, also ...
Adianoeta – a phrase carrying two meanings: an obvious meaning and a second, more subtle and ingenious one (more commonly known as double entendre). Alliteration – the use of a series of two or more words beginning with the same letter. Amphiboly – a sentence that may be interpreted in more than one way due to ambiguous structure.
This is typically used to convey a different shade of meaning from a strictly positive sentence ("You're not unattractive" vs "You're attractive"). Multiple negation is the more general term referring to the occurrence of more than one negative in a clause. In some languages, double negatives cancel one another and produce an affirmative; in ...
For instance, while the previous sentence is grammatically correct and uses words appropriately, its rhetorical structure contains unnecessary repetitions and could be revised as, "Linguistic redundancy is regarded as having more than one: agreement feature in morphology; phoneme distinguishing feature in phonology; or word to express a single ...
In linguistics and grammar, affirmation (abbreviated AFF) and negation (NEG) are ways in which grammar encodes positive and negative polarity into verb phrases, clauses, or utterances. An affirmative (positive) form is used to express the validity or truth of a basic assertion, while a negative form expresses its falsity.