GWD-8-Q41 中国人很难作对的一题

AlienX

這題的管方答案是B
as many的用法在Longman上有:

as many=a number that is equal to another number:
They say the people of Los Angeles speak 12 languages and teach just as many in the schools.

in as many days/weeks/games etc   
A great trip! We visited five countries in as many days (=in five days).

lcy19812000

A it is. Erin explained the points out very clearly.

fighting127

official answer is B

AlienX

unfortunately Erin is wrong because he is not GMAC/ETS ;-)

uustar

可是如果答案是b的话，c哪里不对？

lcy19812000

以下是引用AlienX在2009-3-7 14:45:00的发言：
unfortunately Erin is wrong because he is not GMAC/ETS ;-)

AlienX, please explain the reason why you take B, or what are wrong with the other choices?

In A, is that many incorrect? Is less than one-quarter correct as Erin says?  I think he is right.  But the official answer B uses fewer in place of less. I am very puzzled on this point.

In C, is amount can be used here? I think it makes sense to refer to the number some 4000.

About D, I know that many CDers says of must be inserted between one-quarter and the amount. 

In E, I think that it has no referrence.

Help me, please, thank you!

AlienX

A: 我是讚同Erin的說法 -- percent or fraction是用less than而不是用fewer than.  OG/Prep上有很多的examples.  我看了Garner's Modern American Usage, 書上是傾向less than X percent因為sounds better and less formal而不是它對, 而這個usage是debate了很久...唯一我能想的possible explanation是less跟much是一個pair, 而fewer跟many是一個pair(Garner's Modern American Usage有說).  我看了所有用less than X percent of Y的OG/Prep題, 那個Y都剛好不是much/many除了這題.  有2個possibilities: ETS給錯答案(還沒出現過), 有新的知識點我不會...
C, D, E錯: amount只能用在不可數的名詞/time/money上, e.g. amount of energy (OG10#8)
D: number不用less

AlienX

one more thing to add:
NY Times上的都是好文章, 可是不是perfect, 就這個usage來說, nytimes.com上有less than one quarter, 也有fewer than one quarter的句子
所以不要太rely on google/nytimes.com, they are just your last resorts ;-)

nemo11

这道题还是考倒装吧。there be 的倒装

B  there are fewer than one-quarter as many

C there are fewer than one-quarter of that amount

B中there are，one-quarter代表1000，那么谓语用复数are

而C中 one-quarter of that amount中心词还是amount，那么谓语应该是单数is，而不是are

AlienX

umm...lcy19812000的主要問題是問為什麼A不對...