Tautology in Persian Language: A Case of Morphology

The present study examines the conceptual relation of tautology in Persian by comparing the findings with Szymanek’s morphological classification framework. Based on this classification, tautology in the first place is considerable in both compounding and derivation groups. In the former group, appositional compounding is considered a sub-group whereas in the latter, the following sub-groups are observable: affix doubling; synonymous affixes on a single base; the affix repeating a meaning already contained in the base and the affix not changing the meaning of the base. This study which was conducted via a descriptive-analytic method collected the data expressing redundancy, iteration or tautology and compared them with each group. First the data were culled from audio-visual resources like radio and television, as well as electronic sources and the Persian native speakers’ daily conversations. Then they were listed according to Szymanek’s model. The results showed that the compound and derivational words used in Persian and expressing tautology are in compatible with what Szymanek has given and no model is there for which no word in Persian does not exist. Moreover, Persian data are composed of formal, informal and colloquial words and in some cases the words belong to a particular accent.