Re: more than wheat...?

Lars Eighner wrote:
In our last episode, <1hysg7o.stc5w4uksyzqN%trio@xxxxxxxxxx>, the
lovely and talented Donna Richoux broadcast on alt.usage.english:

cybercypher <dontbother@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


More of your bitter and bitchy prejudice. You're not an English
teacher either, so don't speak for English teachers.

No, but I had them. If English teachers were not behind the
perpetuation of the no-preposition-at-end-of-sentence rule, who was?

I suppose backtracking to civility is unlikely at this point. I have
no objection to ending a sentence with a preposition, but do object to
prepositions without objects. "Into" can be only one of two things:
a preposition or a particle of a phrasal verb. If it is a
preposition,
it needs an object. If it is a particle of a phrasal verb that is
transitive, that verb needs and object. An object seems to missing in
either case.

I think so too. Part of the problem is that the verb requires a noun phrase as a complement; it can't be an adjective, like in:
0) He has grown taller than I have.
In that example the complement is also clearly the comparative. But in the sentence under discussion, we have the comparative buried inside a noun phrase. To me, that seems to break the way the syntax works as a comparison.

1) X has developed into a larger thing than Y.
- no problem
2) X has developed into a larger thing than Y is.
- probably also OK, because it does not require the implicit repetition of the 'developed into'
3) X has developed into a larger thing than Y has.
- that's where it breaks

So, if you take 0) as the model for the implicit completion:
He has grown taller than I have grown tall.
- it looks like the rule is that you repeat the verb and the non-comparative form of the adjective.

Applying that to 3) gives:
X has developed into a larger thing than Y has developed into large.
- which can't work because the verb can't take an adjectival complement.

Possible alternatives:
X has developed into a larger thing than Y has developed into a thing
- doesn't work either because it doesn't repeat the point of comparison, the size.
X has developed into a larger thing than Y has developed into a large thing
- also sounds like gibberish. Like 'X has grown than Y has grown'; the comparative is nested too deep to work as a comparison.

So, going back to the original query, I think that:
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, corn has developed into a larger American cash crop than wheat has.
- might be common casual spoken English, but I don't think it is correct formal English.

The simple fix is to drop the 'has', which I don't see any possible objection to.

--
Regards
John
for mail: my initials plus a u e
at tpg dot com dot au







.

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