| 词组 | as ... as |
| 释义 | as ... as 1.As ... as, so... as. As a general rule, it is safe to observe that as ... as is regularly used in positive statements, and either as ... as or so ... as in negative statements. This state of affairs was not always the case. Lamberts 1972 says that up until about a century ago, so ... as was the regular form in negative statements. It is a very old construction; the OED shows so... as from the 13th century on. Apparently as ... as began to be used in negative statements sometime in the 18th century; Marckwardt & Walcott 1938 cite a study that found the construction in Swift, Johnson, Boswell, and others. Leonard 1929 notes that a grammarian named J. Mennye in 1785 was apparently the first to insist on so after not. Since 18th-century grammarians prescribed most of their rules in cases of divided usage, we can fairly assume that Mennye was aware of as ... as being used after not. Lowth 1762 was probably not aware of divided usage: he describes the so ... as construction, illustrated entirely with examples of negative statemerits, but states no rule and uses neither the word negative or not. Mennye's book was published in New York. Leonard says that he had a large number of followers in the authors of 19th-century grammars and handbooks. In a grammer by Joseph Hervey Hull published in Boston in 1829, for example, the sentence "This is not as good as that" appears in a list of "incorrect phrases" to be corrected by the pupil. Bryant 1962 cites a study showing that in the middle of the 19th century only about 11 percent of the writers studied were using negative as ... as; by the middle of the 20th century negative as ... as was used by more than 52 percent of the writers studied. As early as 1927, G. P. Krapp asserted that negative as ... as was usual in speech. Surveys—Leonard 1932, Mittins et al. 1970, Crisp 1971—all show it to be established. Handbooks, however, followed their 19th-century counterparts and continued to insist on so... as in negative contexts well into the first half of the 20th century. The prescription may be most firmly established in the field of business writing; we have one such text (Him-street & Baty) prescribing so in negative contexts as recently as 1977. Most current handbooks join Bernstein 1971 in counting it among Miss Thistlebottom's hobgoblins; they all recognize the legitimacy of both constructions, although a few (for instance Janis 1984, Freeman 1983) find the so ... as construction more formal or more appropriate in formal contexts. Assertions about relative formality, however, do not bear much scrutiny, at least with respect to writing. A study made at Merriam-Webster before the publication of Webster's Third and based on citations gathered from the late 1930s up to the early 1950s showed the negative as ... as more common than so ... as, but the great bulk of the citations for both constructions are from the same sources and in a few instances from the same authors. There is no particular difference in formality. Further, evidence from collections of letters (such as Jane Austen's or Henry Adams's) shows a tendency to follow the prevailing mode. Jane Austen, writing in the early 19th century, regularly uses as ... as in positive contexts: • ... I was as civil to them as their bad breath would allow me—20 Nov. 1800 and so ... as in negative ones: • She is not so pretty as I expected —12 May 1801 Henry Adams, writing at the end of the 19th century, uses both as ... as and so ... as in negative contexts: • The Church never was as rotten as the stock-exchange now is —17 Feb. 1896 • No history ... contains contrasts so dramatic and so gorgeously tragic, as the contrast between the Cathedrals of the 13th and the Chateaux of the 15th centuries—25 Sept. 1895 Our recent evidence, too, shows little difference in elevation between the constructions: • Serious first novels don't do nearly as well as they should —John Irving, N.Y. Times Book Rev., 25 May 1980 • He would eat hot soup and drink whiskey and sweat—my Uncle Jake did not, decidedly, do anything so delicate as perspire —Aristides, American Scholar, Winter 1981-82 The mystery about as ... as and so ... as is why so ... as has begun to decline in regularity of usage (although certainly it is far from defunct). There is probably no one reason, but three possible contributing factors can be identified. First, English does not in general have different grammatical structures for negative statements; in most cases they are simply positive statements negated. Second, as Bryant and others point out, many as... as comparisons are fixed in English as regular patterns (as cool as a cucumber, as sly as a fox, as clean as a whistle, as dry as dust, etc.) where negation would not normally produce an introductory so. And third, the grammarians themselves may have made a contribution. By the time not as ... as began to draw even with not so ... as, Mennye's prescription had been repeated for about a century. Some observers feel that the constant use of false syntax—the presentation of examples to be corrected—served to reinforce rather the patterns the grammarians deemed incorrect than those supposed to be correct. We should not overlook the occurrence of so ... as in positive contexts. While it does not appear to have been especially common at any time, neither does it appear to have been rare. The OED has examples from the 15th century to the 19th century. It survives especially in a few expressions concerned with time. Boswell used these: • ... a spinnet, which, though made so long ago as 1667, was still very well toned —Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 1785 He even more or less puts it into Dr. Johnson's speech: • He told me that "so long ago as 1748 he had read 'The Grave, a Poem' but did not like it much." — Life of Samuel Johnson, 1791 H. L. Mencken used a similar expression: • ... so late as 1870 —The American Language, Supplement II, 1948 More often, however, we find positive so ... as where as ... as might have been used when the writer appears to want the additional emphasis of so that comes from its use as a degree word: • Super-duper profs even go so far as to try to enter real politics —Anthony Lambeth, Change, Summer 1971 • Now it may strike us as somewhat incredible that a viewpoint ostensibly so liberating as that of Boas could lead to a defense of traditionalism —New Republic, 19 Apr. 1939 • ... delighted musicians so different as Paul White-man and Duke Ellington —Gilbert McKean, Saturday Rev., 27 Sept. 1947 Both as ... as and so ... as are used in negative constructions; you can choose the one that sounds better in any given instance. In positive constructions as... as is the prevalent form; positive so ... as is not wrong but simply much less common. 2. Copperud 1970 notes a couple of commentators who object to as ... as constructions with the first as omitted; he also notes that Evans 1957 considers it acceptable. The OED records it without stigma and lists citations from about 1200 on, including ones from such writers as Wyclif, Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, and Richardson. Here are a couple of more modern instances: • It was jolly as could be —Henry Adams, letter, 22 Apr. 1859 • He's hooked bad as I am —Robert Strauss, quoted in N. Y. Times Mag., 20 May 1984 3. If a pronoun follows an as ... as comparison, is it to be in the nominative case or the objective case? Is it "She is as tall as I" or "She is as tall as me"? Commentators differ. Longman 1984 prefers the nominative; Heritage 1982 permits either but says that traditionalists prefer the nominative; Phythian 1979 thinks that the nominative would be regarded as pretentious even though correct; Evans 1957 thinks the objective is preferred. Our evidence is of little help in this instance, because the typical "Is Mary as tall as I (or me)" construction is very rare in the sort of discursive prose most of our evidence comes from. What is more, as is often omitted from concordances of prose works precisely because its great frequency of occurrence would add to the bulk of the work. And as it is not a dialectal construction, those dictionaries that concern themselves with speech forms are not much help either. Grammarians and commentators have their opinions, but hard evidence seems difficult to come by. The apparent trend among commentators toward approving the objective case seems to be related to the use of the objective case after linking verbs. See also it's me; than 1. 4. See as good or better than. |
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