| 词组 | one of the ... if not the |
| 释义 | one of the ... if not the Phythian 1979 discusses this example: • The new National Theatre is one of the most imaginative, if not the most imaginative, buildings of our time. The problem here, says Phythian (and his view of this construction is shared by Bernstein 1965, Harper 1975, 1985, Shaw 1975, 1987, and Copperud 1964, 1970, 1980), is that the part of the sentence outside the commas calls for the plural buildings, and the part inside the commas calls for the singular building. The sentence is therefore ungrammatical. This construction is somewhat similar to as good or better than (which see) in that it contains a grammatical anomaly or discontinuity that is more likely to be troubling to usage commentators than to ordinary readers. It does not hinder understanding and is at worst a stylistic blemish. You can revise the problem away easily enough by moving the noun forward to follow the first adjective; most of your readers are not likely to be aware of the difference. We do not have much evidence for the construction. It may be infrequent in edited prose, or it may simply be that this is not the sort of construction that readily catches the attention of those who read to collect citations for dictionaries. It is older, naturally, than the comment on it: • ... a busy America is one of the great, if not the greatest, influences —James Forrestal, quoted in Time, 20 Jan. 1947 A bit of a curiosity, perhaps, is this example with a singular rather than a plural noun after the commas. This would be equally unsatisfactory to the commentators; it is probably due to the attraction of the closer phrase. • For we are in the midst of one of the greatest, if not the greatest, crisis of our national history —Louis M. Hacker, N.Y. Herald Tribune Book Rev., 2 Nov. 1941 |
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