| 词组 | as good or better than |
| 释义 | as good or better than Under this heading we will discuss a construction involving both the positive and comparative of several adjectives (good seems only to be the most common of them) that has been the subject of corrective efforts since the 18th century. (Bryant 1962 calls the construction dual comparison and Bernstein 1977 incomplete alternative comparison.) Correction begins with Campbell 1776, who exhibits this sentence: • Will it be urged that the four Gospels are as old, or even older, than tradition? —Bolingbroke, Philosophical Essays What exercises Campbell is that than, which goes with older, does not go with old. Insert as after old, says Campbell, and everything will be put right. Lindley Murray 1795 picked up the example and the solution (he did sanitize the example by replacing four Gospels with book; Murray brooked no questioning of Christianity) and passed both on to the 20th century, where we can find them in various guises in Copperud 1970, Shaw 1970, Johnson 1982, Janis 1984, Harper 1985, and more. This issue arises from the 18th-century grammarians' concern with developing a perfectly logical language— logical from the point of view of Latin grammar—and eliminating as many untidy English idioms as possible. If Campbell had not noticed it, this locution might now be considered simply another idiomatic usage. It certainly is a venial fault, since no reader is confused by the construction. Let us look at a few examples: • In Philadelphia she lived on Chestnut Hill, which considers itself as good if not better than the Main Line —Life, 15 Apr. 1940 (in Bryant 1962) • ... other slums, as bad or worse than those marked for obliteration —N. Y. Times, 1 Apr. 1954 • You will observe that I admire my own work as much if not more than anybody else does —Flan-nery O'Connor, letter, 4 May 1955 • ... a rate it said was as good or better than conventional trains —N.Y. Times, 9 Apr. 1970 • ... but the mayors have as good if not a better point —Glenn A. Briere, Springfield (Mass.) Sunday Republican, 1 Dec. 1985 These are the simple, or unpunctuated, variety of the expression. You can see that they are readily understandable and do not require correction on that score; the as that would follow the positive adjective if it were used alone has been omitted and the than that would normally follow the comparative has been retained— the proximate adjective has determined the choice of conjunction. The construction can be found occasionally in a more elaborate and punctuated form: • It was as great, or perhaps greater than the glow that came when, as a cub, he read his first paragraph in the paper —Stanley Walker, N.Y. Herald Tribune Book Rev., 19 Oct. 1941 This is a perplexing example. It can be reasonably argued that since the adjectives are being separated by a comma, the second as should not have been omitted. And there should have been a comma after greater, which perhaps the typesetter left out inadvertently. If your comparative is going to be elaborated enough to require that you interrupt the flow of the sentence with commas, you might do well to insert the balancing as. With the insertion of punctuation, however, you can stumble into a different problem. In the following example, the or more seems to have been an afterthought. The as of the positive has been retained, and no than supplied for the comparative: • ... the first step towards making bookselling there as much, or more, of a profession as it is in other countries —Publishers Weekly, 10 Feb. 1951 We think that the as good or better than construction is probably simply a long-lived English idiom; it need not be routinely revised out of general writing that does not strive for elevation. If you disagree, and prefer your constructions always unelided, there are at least two things you can do. We will use an example from Bernstein 1977 for illustration: • ... a giant rocket with lifting power as great or greater than the Saturn 5's. The time-honored suggestion is to supply the missing as; supplying it will require two commas: • ... a giant rocket with lifting power as great as, or greater than, the Saturn 5's. Bernstein thinks this solution a bit "on the prissy side." He suggests as an alternative putting the or greater at the end; it will need to be set off with a comma. • ... a giant rocket with lifting power as great as the Saturn 5's, or greater. He finds this solution more graceful than the first. He also suggests that the following revision is a way out, if you don't like all the commas: • ... a giant rocket with lifting power at least as great as the Saturn 5's. |
| 随便看 |
英语用法大全包含2888条英语用法指南，基本涵盖了全部常用英文词汇及语法点的翻译及用法，是英语学习的有利工具。