In response to my post on sentences like "The two men share greatly differing views", Arnold Zwicky, who is at home on babysitting duty, emailed to point out that
"Share" instead of "have" in "share differing/different/diverse" is, I think, just the flip side of this alternation in "share the same/identical", which is often disapproved of as a "pleonasm" or "redundancy".
Does that make it an antipleonasm? or perhaps an disredundancy?
Arnold goes on to say:
Even more exciting, it's easy to find combinations of "share the same" and "both have the same" (also sometimes noted as a pleonasm): "both share the same", which nets 11,400 Google web hits. Reredundancy!
Well, hang on to your hat, Arnold, because we can also find "both share different" and "all share different":
(link) Since some students find it difficult to work with other students, because they both share different knowledge, characteristics, and interests.
(link) Both male and female Eastern Rosellas are monomorphic and both share different shades of colours some more brighter than others of the same sex.
(link) The professors both share different views of the text; this makes the discussions very lively and exciting.
(link) I live with many cats, and they all share different gifts.
(link) Not only does each member of the band claim a different musical background, but the[y] all share different ties to Nipe as well.
Is this disreredundancy ? or perhaps redisredundancy?
I'm relieved to be able to report that Google's index does not contain any instances of "both share the same different" or "all share the same different" -- that might have been too much excitement for one day!
It could have happened, though -- the "three charges" mentioned below could be said to "all share the same different velocities...":
(link) Start the simulation with three identical charges, traveling at the same different velocities perpendicular to a magnetic field using the button below.
... at least this should be possible for a speaker of the "share different" persuasion, which I am not.
Posted by Mark Liberman at June 15, 2004 05:24 PM