Mark Barratt
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2004 2:01 am
Post subject: Re: Comparative |
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clara wrote:
| Quote: | Hi,
Should we say:
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I can't tell you what we *should* say, but I can tell you what we
*do* say:
| Quote: | 1) "he's got twice as many books as me" or "he's got twice more
books than me"
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He's got twice as many books as me.
Because "twice as many" means double the amount. 6 is twice as
many as 3. "Twice more" means a further two times. If I hit you
three times, then hit you twice more, I've hit you 5 times in all.
| Quote: | 2) "I'm all the angrier that he lied to me" or "I'em all the
angrier as/ since he lied to me"? I feel that both are correct
but don't mean exactly the same thing. Am I right?
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You have three alternatives here. The first, with 'that', means
unambiguously that his lying to me has made me angrier. The
second, with 'as', would mean the same, but does not trip readily
off my tongue - I would prefer 'because' (perhaps because 'as'
sounds like a tense confusion). The third, with 'since', is
ambiguous - it might mean the same (since = because), but it
would more probably mean that I became angrier at the time that
he lied to me and have remained so. 'Since' used in this way,
though, generally triggers a perfect tense:
- I've been all the angrier since he lied to me.
On the whole I prefer the first version.
--
Mark Barratt
Budapest |
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