I haven't heard anyone say it was "wrong" - don't quote me (or Karl) on
that one! I simply said it was tautologous and that some people wouldn't
like it, which is hard to deny. (Indeed I am an existence proof of it, tho
not nearly as particular in language as some of my friends!)
Since the word "anniversary" is evidently being used in the sense of
"commemoration", which is totally neutral in a time sense, why not use the
phrase "five year (or five month) commemoration"?
More generally, I don't understand how use of a corpus can provide much
evidence on acceptability (or otherwise) unless it is common. In this case
"year anniversary" is clearly the rare exception and how does one know
whether people wince when they hear it? Is there a critical percentage??
The generalised sense of anniversary hasn't made it into any of the
dictionaries I have, but it's intuitively obvious and I'm interested to
know how the dictionary compilers treat this.
If one DOES want to use a corpus for this purpose, one needs at least to
acknowledge the different varieties of World English. What is acceptable in
one place may sound very odd in another and one would need to be careful in
identifying the source of quotations (tho it was found in the BNC as well
as American corpora).
Chris
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