Grammar Question

Michael Collins

What do people think about phrases like:

"...was compared in these comparisons"
or
"...we simulated the simulations"

I come across this a bit in the scientific area and - to me, it sounds awful!

Does anyone have a name for this kind of poor phrasing? There must be some official name?

Thanks.

pickarooney

Good question, but more suited to the English forum I think.

Michael Collins

Cheers pickarooney, had a quick look but wasn't sure where to start the thread.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

pickarooney

The best I can come up with is a polyptoton which sounds painful.

Eliot Rosewater

I'd always try to avoid repetition like that.

The second example is actually logically incorrect, too. "...we simulated the simulations". It would appear here that the authors designed one simulation, and then designed a second simulation to simulate the first simulation!

Donkey Oaty

Scientists have their own odd way of describing things in papers and usually to ensure that there cannot be any ambiguity whatsoever in what they are saying.

The only use of the phrase "we simulated the simulations" I've been able to find through Google is in a paper called "Extreme fluctuations in small-world networks with relaxational dynamics", an incomprehensible piece of gibberish to me, but no doubt an excellent contribution to the field. They put "simulated the simulations" in quotes and it does appear to be some sort of meta-simulation, as Eliot sugggests.

They do not say if they simulated the simulations simulataneously.

Chewbacca.

Simple Simon surely simulated Stephen's simulations significantly so Sorchas scientific solutions showed superiority .

Yakuza

Michael Collins wrote: »

What do people think about phrases like:

"...was compared in these comparisons"
or
"...we simulated the simulations"

I come across this a bit in the scientific area and - to me, it sounds awful!

Does anyone have a name for this kind of poor phrasing? There must be some official name?

Thanks.

I was going to suggest the word "tautology", but when I looked it up to make sure, it doesn't fit the exact definition of what's going on, but pleonasm is closer (I'd never heard of that word before today).

More info here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_(rhetoric)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleonasm

nompere

I was taught that it is wrong to define a word by using the word in the definition.

So I've always enjoyed this definition, contained in S. 654 Taxes Consolidation Act 1997:

‘‘farming’’ means farming farm land

Donkey Oaty

nompere wrote: »

I was taught that it is wrong to define a word by using the word in the definition.

So I've always enjoyed this definition, contained in S. 654 Taxes Consolidation Act 1997:

‘‘farming’’ means farming farm land

Ah now, be fair - they go on to show how "farm land" is not "market garden land" or any other kind of land which can be farmed.

It's them legal law lawyers that are to blame.

nompere

I am being fair - I have to read that stuff every day.

I've tried and failed this morning to find the full quotation. But there is a story, atttributed to a judge, who remarked that he found understanding tax legislation much easier when he realised that it was written in a foreign language that happened to use English words.

Dave Barry is an American writer who has considered tax on many occasions. This is one of his best:

"Of course the truth is that the congresspersons are too busy raising campaign money to read the laws they pass. The laws are written by staff tax nerds who can put pretty much any wording they want in there. I bet that if you actually read the entire vastness of the U.S. Tax Code, you'd find at least one sex scene ("'Yes, yes, YES!' moaned Vanessa as Lance, his taut body moist with moisture, again and again depreciated her adjusted gross rate of annualized fiscal debenture")."