pleonasms

[Alice Faber]

Laurence Horn said:
>At 9:29 PM -0500 2/13/02, Baker, John wrote:
>>         You must not have the pin/pen merger.  I've used "ink pen" as a
>>disambiguating phrase any number of times.  And "lead pencil" is not
>>tautologous, because there are non-lead pencils too.
>>
>>John Baker
>
>I would think "ink pen" isn't that common a disambiguator in just
>those dialects that have the merger.  While there aren't too many
>contexts in which you'd need to specify "ink pen" to distinguish it
>from "pig pen", I could imagine walking into a general store that
>sells both stationery supplies and notions (if that's what a straight
>pen is) and having to specify which kind of "pVn" one needed.

The primary opposition is "ink /pIn/" vs "hair /pIn/", or at least it was
when I was in grad school. (I suppose hair pins have gone the way of the
hair net anymore.)