掲示板 Forums - List of tautological words

I just found a page in Japanese on this subject. It doesn't have a huge list, but here they are:
road + road 道路
help + help 救助
image + image 絵画
stop + stop 停止
add + add 増加
reduce + few 減少
river + river 河川
forest + forest 森林
trees + tree 樹木
ground + ground 土地
rock + stone 岩石
drink + eat 飲食
warehouse + warehouse 倉庫
rich + wealth 豊富
money + money 金銭
skin + skin 皮革
body + body 身体
onself + self 自己
start + begin 開始
compete + contend 競争
indicate + indicate 指示
exist + exist 存在
revolve + revolve 回転　and 転回
warm + warmth 温暖
cold + cold 寒冷
dark + black 暗黒
eternity + long time 永久
passing of time + past 過去
appear + present 表現
pure + clean 清潔
excel + excel 優秀
noble + respect 尊敬
variety + variety 種類
goods + thing 品物
law + law 憲法

The list also has 容易. Maybe he was thinking about 内容, which I added below?

Maybe enough to start a schedule...
And some antonymic words:
寒暖〔寒⇔暖〕 苦楽〔苦⇔楽〕 高低〔高⇔低〕 損得〔損⇔得〕

左右〔左⇔右〕 縦横〔縦⇔横〕 男女〔男⇔女〕 天地〔天⇔地〕

否応〔否⇔応〕　←「不承知・承知」のセットだから⑥ではない！
往復 開閉 加減 集散 出欠 進退 生死 増減 断続 問答

新旧 正誤 善悪 軽重 貧富 明暗 因果 公私 夫婦 利害

Interestingly, none of the 9 tautological words I could think of was in the list of 36 that I found. This strongly indicates that there are many, many more, and my guess that there are hundreds of them is likely to be true.

I found one more list (some already mentioned)
優秀 早速 空虚 戦争 競争 平和 平等 会合 応答 多大
削除 土地 画像 頻繁 基礎 遅延 親近 清潔 造作 通行
広大 縮小 拡大

And another list of antinomic words
善悪、正邪、美醜、明暗、男女、大小、長幼、長短、
軽重、強弱、好悪、高低、公私、前後、左右、上下、
今昔、寒暖、難易、東西、南北、和洋、緩急、天地、
開閉、有無、真贋、真偽、生死、授受、清濁、賢愚、
増減、加減、是非、曲直

Now for sure it's enough to create ２schedules worth studying.
But is there a way to create them easily?

Done, I created the lists "Tautologicals" with 66 words https://www.renshuu.org/study/...
and "Antinomicals" with 58 words https://www.renshuu.org/study/...
It doesn't seem like there were words to designate these words concisely, so I just made them up.
Suggestions to expand the two lists are welcome…

I'm not sure if I fully understand the concept of tautological words.
Would those rather mundane words such as 時代 (time + ages), 年代 (year + ages), 年月 (year + month) or 月日 (month + day) and the like fit the profile? I don't think I've seen them in your list.

As for the antinomicals, how about 今古 (now + old), 火水 or 水火 (fire + water) and 白黒 (white + black)?

It's not completely unheard of. In the Kanji Kentei, on certain levels, there is a question type that asks you to define the relationship between two kanji comprising a word. You have to choose whether they have a similar meaning, an opposite one or if one elaborates on the other. For instance, from the test sample for 5級:


While this is less strict than your definition, I imagine these sort of lists appear in preparatory material geared for these sections, partitioned by kanji level. Or, put differently, people wanting to study towards them could benefit much from the lessons you created.

Thanks a lot gdartfow, that's interesting! But I didn't see anything about this in English, so it's a very uncommon subject. Also, the few small lists I found (which I copied in my 2nd and 4th message here), and the test question you provided only consider the tautologicals as only something one should be able to see for studying kanjis. While I think it can be used as mnemonics to study those words and their kanjis, I also think it's a linguistic phenomenon worthy of attention in itself, like the linguistic phenomenon of doubling words to insist.
Let me check if there's something on the subject in French, Russian or German, I could have a surprise… zilch, nada and tipota.
In this test they give 消火 as the example for the case え, while I included this words in my list of antinomics. Most of the words in this list are things like "up down", "pros and cons" etc, but the exceptions are more interesting. Like 左右, which doesn't just mean left and right.

Thanks Karlla, just added them!

That's really interesting, thanks! I just read that chapter in the first book, it's precisely what I was interested in. And it largely confirms what I thought, that either Chinese writing (or anything that's not strictly phonetic-based, but Egyptian and Mayan glyphs have lost popularity recently, so I'll just say Chinese writing) OR agglutination can create this phenomenon: Mordvin, Georgian, Uzbek and other languages quoted repeatedly are agglutinative. I didn't read the whole book, but I noticed a sentence saying that there may be something that prevents this phenomenon in European languages (how about alphabetical writing and the absence of agglutination?... What about Hungarian?)
I also noticed that the author barely touched Japanese, with an example p 19 pointing to the fact he probably didn't have enough information and therefore couldn't correctly assess this phenomenon in the Japanese language.
I also noticed that the author quotes a 1982 Soviet article, in which the author, who was writing in Russian, used a concept excessively common (to my taste) in Russian to describe a completely different phenomenon. In Russian you don't eat strawberries, you eat strawberry, which is a collective noun. And there are way too many of these words (speaking as a user). So when the Soviet linguist discussed Uzbek or Mordvin words like mountainhill, honourhonour etc, he mentioned that as a case of collective nouns, which seems (after this first read) like he completely missed the point. Couldn't make a new word to describe something new? Too old to adopt new concept? Or, unfortunately, it's possible it was dictated by political considerations: in some cases Soviet linguists had to stretch what they knew to fit into the ideology that Soviet peoples are brothers (and therefore they had to show imaginary similarities). The Balto Slavic language group is a bit of a stretch, for example, and Baltic schoolchildren were taught about some insignificant similarities as a proof of a the languages being very close.
Don't laugh too hard at the USSR, though, the EU does pretty much the same, in a more subtle way 
Anyway, thanks again for those references. The first pretty much confirms, at least, that this phenomenon in the Japanese language hadn't received enough attention, as it's quite an interesting phenomenon.

I don't think you should regret that, I have scientific degrees, languages are just a fascinating hobby. Besides, some linguistic professors are best at taking the fun out of languages (that's what I gathered from some of their victims). Also, if you find something interesting that wasn't studied well enough, you can dig and become the expert on that very specific question (and contradict "common knowledge"), if you try hard. Happened to me, in a completely different subject (and I was proven right 2 years later).
I just thought about a pretty obvious one:
try.try is a trial, 試験. That's number 120, I think, and if there are still obvious ones like this, there must be at the very least 100 more. I wonder if there are 3kanji and 4kanji tautologicals and antinomicals, couldn't think of one yet, but I probably didn't look hard enough.
Funnily, I wouldn't have paid attention to this if I weren't learning Greek, which made me pay attention to some unexpected similarities among European languages and sometimes beyond. E.g. when people agree in Greek (συμ•φωνώ, hence "symphony"), it means they "together•voice", that their voices are in tune... in a musical chord (French then English accord, Italian accordo...), same as Russian со•гласие. Or "Zu•stimmung" in German, and 同•調 in Japanese. Yes, there are several words for that in Japanese, and German etc, but this musical analogy is one of them. I would guess this idea is present in all cultures that have the concept of musical chord.
So, when I paused and thought about 舞踊, and realized that there's nothing like that in the European languages I know, I thought it's worth looking at it.

Thanks!