Mark Wagner wrote:

On 4/23/06, Gordon Joly gordon.joly@pobox.com wrote:

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At 16:45 +0300 23/4/06, Ilmari Karonen wrote:

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Gordon Joly wrote:

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Today's featured article (Main Page, 23rd April 2006)

"Turkish literature is the literature written in the Turkish language....."

Without even looking at the article, I'm guessing that "literature" and "Turkish language" are wikilinks.

Does that stop it being a tautology?

It distinguishes "literature written in the Turkish language" from "literature written in the country of Turkey" from "literature written by Turks", all of which are valid interpretations of the phrase "Turkish literature".

That distinction escapes some people. :-)

All definitions are tautologies.

There are no references that back this up, as far as I can see...

Gordo

Of course that's because they're not needed. All the author is doing is defining the scope of the article. It was his choice to select from the list that Mark has outlined or even to make it about something else. He could say that Turkish literature was the literature of Vanuatu; that would be counterintuitive and would be challenged, but as long as what followed in the article was consistent with the definition it would not be wrong.

Definitions do not always need references, and especially not when they serve to disambiguate between reasonable possibilities. References help more when the possibilities are in conflict or when a neologism is at issue.

Ec