Hi all,
Thanks for all the comments received on the 'puzzle' - interesting that it
has been so widely repeated in various forms. I first came across it as a
puzzle with the game 'mindbenders' (a set of cards really), which I'm not
sure is around any more.
Anyhow, here's a slightly more relevant post summarising some recent
conclusions I made on the subject of tautologies. It was an assessed piece
of coursework, which I've now handed in, so no fear of plagiarising!
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Summary:
Tautologies are interesting because they seem to hold no truth-content and
so add no new information to a conversation, yet are widely used do carry a
strong and obvious meaning. In particular, there are many common tautologies
of the form 'X is X'. This example shows one such utterance in context:
(1) A: 'I don't know what kind of toothbrush to get, there are toothbrushes
with flexible heads, toothbrushes with different shaped bristles,
toothbrushes hard bristles, soft bristles...'
B: 'A toothbrush is a toothbrush.'
Wierbicka's 'radical semantics' generalization of tautologies of this type
as carrying some kind of attitude towards human nature clearly doesn't
apply. Ward and Hirschberg offer some useful insights by showing that some
tautological utterances can be given contextual implications through their
violation of quantity/relevance maxims, leading to the deduction that
because the speaker could have said something more about X (eg X is B) but
didn't, they consider no alternatives to be important to the discussion.
This analysis works for (1) (speaker B doesn't think there's anything more
to say about toothbrushes), but doesn't match this example so closely:
(2) A: 'I've changed my mind.'
B: 'A deal is a deal.'
In (2), speaker B could have said many other things about 'a deal' which
would be equally relevant: eg 'a deal is contractually binding'.
Higashimori and Wilson aim to bring the analysis under Relevance Theory, but
end by making the weak claim that they act as 'reminders, implicating that
obvious truths have been overlooked'. Instead, I propose that tautologies
are interpretive, and work by drawing a contrast between a minimal statement
with a specific statement/view supplied by the context. ie, in (1), the
tautology delivers the implication that the given features of toothbrushes
are unimportant. In (2), the tautology works against the implication by
speaker A that the deal might be cancellable by drawing attention to the
fact that the most important aspect of a deal is that of its own defining
characteristics, which include being non-reversible. Note that there is a
different interpretation for (2B) when placed into a context similar to (1A)
where the speaker is asked to give an opinion on which type of deal is best.
This also explains why the oft-used phrase '[you] be yourself!' carries the
implication that there is a view/suggestion out there which says you should
be like someone else.
The exceptions to this analysis are tautologies which are non-equative in
that they draw a link between a objects and stereotypical behaviour of those
objects, eg 'boys will be boys' which acts like 'boys will be boyish/act
like boys' and is falsifiable: 'boys will not be boys' (See Fraser, 1988).
The other exception are tautologies which have a truth function in that they
declare a property as being binary rather than scalar (eg 'you're either in
or you're out' to contrast with the idea of being 'half-in'). There are also
tautologies which are actually repetitions using verbal stress: 'when she's
angry, she's ANGRY!'
References
* Wierzbicka, Anna, 1987. Boys will be boys: 'Radical semantics' vs.
'radical pragmatics'. Language 63: pp 95-114
* Ward, Gregory L and Hirschberg, Julia, 1991. A pragmatic analysis of
tautological utterances. Journal of Pragmatics 15: p 51
* Fraser, Bruce, 1988. Motor oil is motor oil : An account of English
nominal tautologies. Journal of Pragmatics 12: pp 217-218
* Higashimori, Isao and Wilson, Deirdre, 1996. Questions on Relevance : 3.3
Tautology. UCL Working paper in Linguistics 8.
(http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/PUB/WPL/96papers/higashi.pdf)
My full essay available here:
http://www.frankieroberto.com/articles/tautologies.html
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Thoughts and further references duly welcomed!
Frankie Roberto
Enough is enough! :-)
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