Then, I would jump to my questions. For question A and B, you said [the construction is REDUNDANT if you include both "likely" and "may" you can only have one of those]. Later when you answer an student's question about there's no redundancy for "seem likely", you wrote these[ if something seems likely, that doesn't necessarily mean that it is so -- it only seems that way.
e.g.
although rain may seem likely today, it's not going to happen -- so you can leave your umbrella at home.
this sentence makes sense. if you try to replace "may seem likely" with "may be likely", the resulting sentence will be nonsense.]
If my understanding is right, is it a typo, do you mean "although rain seems likely today"? because may and likely and redundant,as you said before.
Thank you for your reply.
well, ok, this one is context-specific. it only makes sense because that sentence is addressed to another person.
note the context in which that sentence would make sense:
•
to the listener, rain seems likely (or
may seem likely—the speaker doesn't really know for sure)
•
to the speaker, rain does NOT seem likely.
in this context, the "may" serves two purposes:
1/ it makes the sense softer and more polite;
2/ it refers to the uncertainty of
whether the other person thinks that it's likely to rain. it does NOT refer to the uncertainty of actual rainfall.
(#1 is obviously not a concern on the gmat, or in written language in general—good writing would very often be characterized as "rude" if spoken out loud.)
