"The _sum total_ of the world's knowledge: 250 exabytes"

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:21 AM -0500 2/14/11, Ronald Butters wrote:
>Well of course the redundancy that people usually complain about is
>in sentences of the form, "A dead body was found yesterday on the
>Yale  campus."

I've always thought the "body" > "dead body" inference was a
pragmatic one, where "person" or such would block the use of "body"
for the non-dead ones.  This predicts that it can be overridden in
various contexts, e.g. in a review in the Yale Daily News of an
experimental play, "Dozens of bodies in various stages of undress
were writhing on the stage", where (if nothing else) the "writhing"
is a clue that the bodies in question were non-dead.  Even the body
found on campus, if it's spotted unmoving from a distance, doesn't
necessarily license the inference that it's dead.  (Or"bodies in the
wreckage" that might be alive or dead pending further investigation.)

LH

>
>On Feb 14, 2011, at 9:45 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>
>>  At 6:33 AM -0500 2/14/11, Ronald Butters wrote:
>>>  or "tiny little" or "big fat" or (used to be) "happy and gay" or
>>>  "dead body" -- the redundancy is emphatic/intensifying
>>
>>  Some of these are less redundant than others.  To say that Robin's
>>  body is more attractive than his/her face is not to say that Robin's
>>  dead body is more attractive than his/her face.  Now "dead corpse"
>>  would be redundant, but "dead body" ain't necessarily so.  (For
>>  example, I often feel as though my body is falling apart, but if I
>>  felt as though my dead body were doing so I'd really be in bad shape.)
>>
>>  LH
>>>
>>>
>>>  On Feb 13, 2011, at 3:27 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>>
>>>>  I wonder why this redundant term, an annoyance to prescriptivists
>>>>  since I was in grade school During The War, has become immortal,
>>>>  unkillable, whereas similarly-redundant terms of common occurrence in,
>>>>  e.g. my native dialect, such as _dusk dark_ and _clay dirt_, are
>>>>  unknown outside of the South.
>>>>
>>>>  --
>>>>  -Wilson
>>>>  -----
>>>>  All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"--a strange complaint to
>>>>  come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>>>>  -Mark Twain
>>>>
>>>>  ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>  The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>
>>>  ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>  The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>>  ------------------------------------------------------------
>>  The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org