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---------------------------------by Ron SC comparisons
What is a comparison?
Several types:
1.Literal conparisions or contrasts
-X is like Y/ X is unlike Y
-X dose Y, as Z dose
Etc.
2.Quatitative comparasions
-Greater than, less than, etc
-More_than, as__as, etc
-Half as much as, 30%, etc
3.General situation that aren’t literally comparisons, but that require comparable things.
-I mistook X for Y.
I mistook that table for__
For the sentence to make any sense, this has table a chair, stool, etc.—in other words, sth of the same general types as a table. It CAN’T just be “any noun”, try putting a noun like communism in there.
-The company replaced X with Y
What do we NEED in the case of comparison?
Parallelism
What kind of parallelism are we talking about?
1.Grammatical parallelism—the comparable elements should play the same grammatical role
2.The things have to be Like each other
-Same priority (order)
-Same type/ class of thing
-Same situation/context
2 more sets of example
I like swimming more than to run.
Grammar bad
Meaning fine
I like swimming more than running.
Chopin’s concertos are more emotional than Mozart.
Grammar fine
Meaning/ logic bad
When you deal with COMPATISONS—
Most errors will be errors of MEANING/LOGIC. Fewer of the errors will be grammatical errors.
If you put ‘S on sth, it acts as an ADJ.
Like __A__, ___B__...
A should be a NOUN. (-ING is ok)
Perhaps with modifiers, but NOT a clause. In other words it should NOT be subj. +V.
Like swimming, running burns many calories. Correct
Like my brother, getting up in the morning has always been hard for me. X
B should be a WHOLE SENTENCE (independent clause)
That STARTS with the comparable NOUN.
In comparisons, AS should be followed by a CLAUSE (subj. + V) or PREP PHRASE, not just a noun!!!
As in comparisons: …should be followed by a CLAUSE or by a PREP PHRASE.
Joe gave 10% of his salary to charity this year, as he did last year. Clause
The weather is hot and dry in Nevada, as it is in Arizona. Clause
As in Arizona, the weather is hot and dry in Nevada. Prep phrase
My friend acted as a monkey. The kind of “as” is not a comparison at all.
It means that you actually took on the role of.
Forum
For sentences that don't have such a simple structure, the goal is to avoid introducing unnecessary complexity.
Here's what you should do with such sentences:
1.identify the right-hand element (= the one that follows the comparison signal)
2. Ask yourself whether this element SHOULD be part of the comparison, according to context/common sense. (There are no "omissions" here. if the stuff following the signal isn't actually compared to something else, the sentence is wrong.
3.If so, try to find something that matches it on the other side. If you find such a thing, you're good.
Some examples related to your first 2 sentences:
People are taller in China than in Spain.
1/
the right-hand element is "Spain".
2/
the sentence is not intended to compare Spain itself with anything. So, this version is wrong. Quit.
--
People are taller in China than in Spain.
1/
the right-hand element is "in Spain".
2/
the sentence compares heights of people, sure. However, it's also true that the sentence directly compares the situation in china with the situation in Spain. (It does not, on the other hand, compare the actual countries of china and Spain; hence why the foregoing example is wrong.)
So, this works.
3/
"in china" is there.
This one works.
Gas prices were higher in 2007 than in 1997.
1/
right-hand element = "in 1997"
2/
this is legitimate (see write-up of previous example, which works in exactly the same way)
3/
"in 2007" is there; we're good.
--
Gas prices were higher in 2007 than those in 1997.
1/
right-hand element = "[gas prices] in 1997"
(meaning of the pronoun is obvious, I hope)
2/
we want to compare prices, so the set-up is ok
3/
nothing works on the other side. We need "gas prices in 2007" (in one piece), but only "gas prices" is there.
Nope.
--
Gas prices in 2007 were higher than those in 1997.
This is one of the easy ones: "X were higher than Y".
X = gas prices in 2007
Y = [gas prices] in 1997
(:
workable.
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发表于 2016-3-21 16:34:55
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