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Robert2 Posted 21 years ago
Grammar

Doubled words that are homographs

Greetings--
As I am aware, the English language has the following doubled words which are correct and actual homographs:

had had
that that

Does anyone know if other grammatical homographs can be found as doubled words in correct English?

Thank you very much for any answer.
Cheers
Robert
  

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13 Answers
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What do you mean with "doubled words"?
Like in in?
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I meant correct forms like "had had" or "that that", not typos like "cat cat". I am looking for a complete listing of the doubles that are grammatically and syntactically possible. Correct doubles, not typos.
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Is "that that" correct?
Or you mean: "Mom says that that boy's not right for me"
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Never thought about it before, Robert. Not very practical, but an interesting exercise. I presume you mean any pair of homographs that could be worked into a sentence?--

just just
set set
top top
rest rest
seal seal
court court
bill Bill
ties ties
record records
jam jam
etc.

That sort of thing?
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Or: "this is the answer I've been waiting for for so long" ?
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Greetings–
I understand that this question might seem trivial or even meaningless but this list will be used to try and program a computer spellchecker in a smart(er) way. If at all possible, we need to have a complete listing of all plausible occurrences of such complete homographs. They have to be exact case-sensitive doubles. This rules out items like “bill Bill” and “record records”. The
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Well, I can context most of them without much trouble-- and I haven't even finished my coffee:

Just just people go to heaven.
The set set Andre Agassiz another point back.
The top top is green and the bottom is a pale yellow; it comes complete with pullstring.
I'll keep going ahead while the rest rest.
I hate it when the kids jam jam into their ears.
Bill Haley r
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You are most certainly drinking good strong coffee!
But honestly, I would not call these real life examples.
They are no more than ad hoc creations.
Plausibility is of the essence here.
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You seem to have a pretty strong opinion of what qualifies as plausible and what doesn't. If the example has to be so plausible as to be common, you probably would have thought of it already. In your place I'd just say that "that that" and "had had" are the complete list, unless you want to include "do do", which is another like "had had", namely, an auxiliary and a main verb.

CJ
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Ah, yes-- I see. What we are looking for is doubled homographs that no one would really notice and edit out for style.

Hmm, can't think of any more. Caffein's worn off. Good luck with it, Robert.

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