You Can Return, but not Again

You probably have heard (or even used) tautologies a million times, but perhaps did not know their actual name. Here is a very common one:

“Let’s all work together, everyone, as a team.”
You will notice here a whole chain of repetitions; the Greek word tautós (ταὐτός) means “identical.” Do you need to put “all” and “everyone” in the same sentence? If you are a group of people, aren’t you a team?

This is why the same idea is accurately conveyed by simply saying “let’s work together.”

Tautologies are also galore in Armenian. One such case is furnished by the use of the prefix վերա (vera “re-”), as in վերադառնալ (veratarnal “to return”). The case is similar to English return “to come or go to a place again.” The prefix re suffices to ensure the repetition embodied by the word “again.” If you have traveled and come back home, you just return, but do not “return again,” which would be a tautology (even though a cursory Internet search revealed five books published between 1940 and 2012 and using “return again” in their titles). 

In Armenian, then, if you have traveled and come back home, the sentence «Ես նորէն Միացեալ Նահանգներ վերադարձայ» (Yes noren Miatsial Nahankner veratartza “I returned again to the United States”) is a tautology, since the word noren is superfluous. You just say Yes Miatsial Nahankner veratartza.

Of course, there are other verbs starting with vera- (“re-”), where the use of “again” (whether noren/նորէն, gurgeen/կրկին, or tartsyal/դարձեալ) is stylistically wrong. If you are a lawyer and you are going through a document you had already read, you cannot say «Ես փաստաթուղթը դարձեալ վերանայեցայ» (Yes pasdatooghtuh tartsyal veranayetsa “I revised again the document”). Նայիլ (nayeel) means “to look” and վերանայիլ (veranayeel) “to revise,” which etymologically is… “to look again.”

The examples can be multiplied. We will leave others for the future.