Grice Grice

Speranza

was a tautonym

From today's World Wide Words, online:

"[S]cientific names in which the same word is used for genus and species are called tautonyms. For example, the red fox is Vulpes vulpes and the black rat is Rattus rattus, while the tiny bird called the wren that I sometimes notice in my garden rejoices in the mighty cognomen Troglodytes troglodytes."

In a way, Grice said,

"Do not be more informative than is required."

In Roman,

A: That's a rat.

B: A rat rat?

A: Yes, a rat rat.

Note that the fact that Latin is used instead of English obscures the fact.

Examples above, by Quinion:

That's a rattus rattus -- a black rat. Literally: a rat rat.

The implicature seems to be that a white, say, rat, is not a 'rat rat'.

Note that 'rat rat' is possibly over-informative.

Similarly,

"I hunted a fox fox today".

"You mean a red fox?"

Latin "vulpes vulpes"

A: That's a fox there!

B: A yellow fox.

A: What are you getting at?

B: Not a fox fox ('nec vulpes vulpes').

Linnaeus, who invented all this, had no problems there, since "I always speak Latin to my child."

A: Troglodytes troglodytes.

B: Or, in plainer English, a wren wren.

A: Are you implicating that a troglodytes aedion is not a wren.

B: It is a wren, but not a wren (or double) wren.

----

Reduplication of the type that flouts Grice's "Do not be overinformative" can apply to any part of speech.

A: I liked it.

B: But did you like it like it?

----

-----

"I like it very much"

"I like it very very much"

--

And so on.