I see the phrase "live young" used when describing mammals. For example, in Wikipedia:
Most mammals are viviparous, giving birth to live young.
What does the phrase "live young" signify here? I guess it might mean "a young [animal] that is alive", but if this is the case isn't it at best redundant?
I mean of course an animal gives birth to a live thing (people don't say "give birth to eggs" or "give birth to rocks", right?). And of course when it's born it's young by definition – one can't be old when they're just born. So what does "live young" signify here?
Best Answer
It's redundant for the purposes of emphasis and clarity. After all, I suppose you could shorten the sentence to:
and then let the reader infer that "giving birth" implies "to a young, living offspring." However, that doesn't really help the reader understand the meaning of the rather uncommon word viviparous. The main point of viviparous is that the animals give birth to live offspring (as opposed to, say, laying eggs), a fact that is made more readily apparant when we lengthen the sentence:
Now, instead of the reader thinking, "Wait, doesn't every animal give birth?" the reader is more prone to say, "Oh, I see – as opposed to laying eggs, or splitting."
There's times when redundant language is helpful, and one place is in an educational text. This is one case where I don't think striking the "redundant" text would constitute an improvement.