The number of people flying first

[RonPurewal]

Link fixed. That was a typo.

Thanks.

[Haibara]

---

Ron, if I interpret your elaboration correctly, virtually you are saying:
1>Physics involves more philosophy than it does maths.
2>Physics involves more philosophy than it involves maths.
These two sentences are grammatically correct, but, in terms of meaning, they make no sense, right? Because the meaning that Physics contains more knowledge of philosophy than it contains knowledge of maths doesn't make any sense in English? Well it certainly makes sense in my mother tongue. I guess it's a real difficulty here.

Stewart has more friends than he does enemies.
Angela has more faith in her husband than she has love for him.

The above sentences are correct, both meaningly and grammatically? However, the following sentences are incorrect?

Stewart has many more friends now than he had friends a year ago.
Angela has more faith in her husband than she has faith in her father.

Similarly,
[i]There are five times as many students as there are teachers in this school.-----> correct?

There are five times as many students in School(A) as there are students in School(B).-----> incorrect?----> "students" should be removed.

Ron, I appreciate your comments on my reasoning.
Thanks as always.

[RonPurewal]

Ron, if I interpret your elaboration correctly, virtually you are saying:
1>Physics involves more philosophy than it does maths.
2>Physics involves more philosophy than it involves maths.

I've redacted my previous post, because I didn't make my point clearly.
These sentences would be fine. Because of potential ambiguity, there's really no better way to write them.

[Haibara]

Ron, thanks. Besides, would you please judge my inference in the following quote?

Stewart has more friends than he does enemies.
Angela has more faith in her husband than she has love for him.

The above sentences are correct, both meaningly and grammatically? However, the following sentences are incorrect?

Stewart has many more friends now than he had friends a year ago.
Angela has more faith in her husband than she has faith in her father.

Similarly,

There are five times as many students as there are teachers in this school.-----> correct?

There are five times as many students in School(A) as there are students in School(B).-----> incorrect?----> "students" should be removed.

Ron, I appreciate your comments on my reasoning.
Thanks as always.

[RonPurewal]

That's the right idea.

[RonPurewal]

It seems there's a misunderstanding here.

Check out this post (again, if you've already seen it):
post26678.html#p26678

This construction works in exactly the same way as the correct example given in that post.

[RonPurewal]

Your approach of dropping the modifier is a good one, but, at least in #3, you need to think some more about the result.

(1)&(2)make sense. (3) The rate of people is about the same in France and US. I think it make sense, too.

"The rate of people" is nonsense.

You may need to think more precisely about what a rate is; there's no context in which "the rate of people" can possibly make sense.

We're talking about the rate at which people consume fatty foods"”in other words, their rate of consumption of such foods.

("The rate of fatty foods" would be nonsense, too.)

[RonPurewal]

You probably have some sort of general understanding of what a rate is. Basically, rates should be somehow expressible in units per other units. E.g., the rate of unemployment is expressed as a percent (= # of unemployed people per 100 people in the work force).

The rate actually described here"”the rate of consumption of fatty foods"”could be measured in grams/day, or something like that.

[RonPurewal]

Can't help loving your explanation !
Thanks!!

Thanks.

[AbhilashM94]

in this case, you can't use "..., twice as many as...", because that's an appositive modifier. appositives must modify some noun that comes IMMEDIATELY before the comma, which in this case would have to be whatever figure is twice whatever other figure. since no such figure is given, you can't use this construction.

so, A, B or C

by contrast, the -ING FOLLOWED BY A COMMA modifies the entire action of the preceding clause. this is exactly what you want to happen, because the actual rising of the # of people flying first class is what "doubled the increase of...". there's no noun in there that pinpoints this concept, so you have to use a modifier that modifies the entire clause.

Ron: Appositive modifiers are same as N-N modifier?

[tim]

What does N-N mean?

Everyone, please understand that when you use non-universal abbreviations in your questions, the result is that we will have to ask you to clarify, which ironically will mean that the process will take way longer than if you had just spelled everything out clearly from the beginning.

[JhanasC520]

ok, let me try this from another angle, because that's still an ungrammatical construction.

when you use this kind of "that" in a comparison, it's a pronoun.
if you try to stick a verb after it, you get an entire sentence (subject+verb) stranded within the middle of a larger sentence; that doesn't work.

in other words, if you take out "that" and put in the noun it's trying to stand for, the sentence woud still work.

take my example:
Stanford's endowment is larger than that of any other university.
Stanford's endowment is larger than the endowment of any other university.
... so this is kosher.
(don't worry about "the"; that's not tested on this exam, and it won't ever be.)

let's try that with yours. (i'm going to assume you meant to write "in" before "1990".)
more than 10 times as much energy is generated through wind power now than that was generated [in] 1990.
more than 10 times as much energy is generated through wind power now than energy was generated [in] 1990.

that latter thing isn't a sentence, because "energy was generated in 1990" is already a sentence.

that's about the best i can do with regard to explaining this. if this still isn't clear to you, i'd suggest forgetting about "rules" and just looking at the patterns in a large number of correctly written comparison sentences. then it should all make more sense.
(this is how the human brain wants to learn language anyway: by recognition and imitation, not by "rules". you'll find that things become much easier if you follow that tendency, rather than trying to resist it.)

Dear Ron,

I saw your explanation on this sentence:

more than 10 times as much energy is generated through wind power now than that was generated 1990.

Can I interpret the wrongness as follows:

As you have mentioned in other posts that " if you're going to use "that" to REPLACE a noun, then it needs to be followed by a MODIFIER, not a subject + verb.", so I think the same rule can also be applied here.
E.g the amount of money I have is twice that you have.
" that " here refers to the mount of money and is the object of VERB have with no modifer.

Since in this sentence, "that" (refers to energy) is functioned as a Subject without any modifier, it is wrong according to above rule.

Am I correct in understanding the wrongness of that sentence?

Look forward to your reply and Many thanks always!

[RonPurewal]

That construction isn't grammatical at all.

Remember, if you're using "that"/"those" to stand for a noun, you should be able to replace "that"/"those" with that specific noun.

If you take out "that" here, and try to put "energy" in its place, there are two serious problems:

• "That" can only stand for "energy"; it is incapable of representing "energy generated through wind power". (A pronoun can't stand for "the energy is generated through wind power", which is what's actually there.)

• "[Energy] was generated in 1990" is a complete sentence. A complete sentence can't be used in this way.

[FanPurewal]

ok, let me try this from another angle, because that's still an ungrammatical construction.

when you use this kind of "that" in a comparison, it's a pronoun.
if you try to stick a verb after it, you get an entire sentence (subject+verb) stranded within the middle of a larger sentence; that doesn't work.

in other words, if you take out "that" and put in the noun it's trying to stand for, the sentence woud still work.

take my example:
Stanford's endowment is larger than that of any other university.
Stanford's endowment is larger than the endowment of any other university.
... so this is kosher.
(don't worry about "the"; that's not tested on this exam, and it won't ever be.)

let's try that with yours. (i'm going to assume you meant to write "in" before "1990".)
more than 10 times as much energy is generated through wind power now than that was generated [in] 1990.
more than 10 times as much energy is generated through wind power now than energy was generated [in] 1990.

that latter thing isn't a sentence, because "energy was generated in 1990" is already a sentence.

that's about the best i can do with regard to explaining this. if this still isn't clear to you, i'd suggest forgetting about "rules" and just looking at the patterns in a large number of correctly written comparison sentences. then it should all make more sense.
(this is how the human brain wants to learn language anyway: by recognition and imitation, not by "rules". you'll find that things become much easier if you follow that tendency, rather than trying to resist it.)

Dear Ron,

I saw your explanation on this sentence:

more than 10 times as much energy is generated through wind power now than that was generated 1990.

Can I interpret the wrongness as follows:

As you have mentioned in other posts that " if you're going to use "that" to REPLACE a noun, then it needs to be followed by a MODIFIER, not a subject + verb.", so I think the same rule can also be applied here.
E.g the amount of money I have is twice that you have.
" that " here refers to the mount of money and is the object of VERB have with no modifer.

Since in this sentence, "that" (refers to energy) is functioned as a Subject without any modifier, it is wrong according to above rule.

Am I correct in understanding the wrongness of that sentence?

Look forward to your reply and Many thanks always!

hi ron
i am still confused, can you please clarify the mistakes in the example (purple things) ?
i can not find.

[jlucero]

ok, let me try this from another angle, because that's still an ungrammatical construction.

when you use this kind of "that" in a comparison, it's a pronoun.
if you try to stick a verb after it, you get an entire sentence (subject+verb) stranded within the middle of a larger sentence; that doesn't work.

in other words, if you take out "that" and put in the noun it's trying to stand for, the sentence woud still work.

take my example:
Stanford's endowment is larger than that of any other university.
Stanford's endowment is larger than the endowment of any other university.
... so this is kosher.
(don't worry about "the"; that's not tested on this exam, and it won't ever be.)

let's try that with yours. (i'm going to assume you meant to write "in" before "1990".)
more than 10 times as much energy is generated through wind power now than that was generated [in] 1990.
more than 10 times as much energy is generated through wind power now than energy was generated [in] 1990.

that latter thing isn't a sentence, because "energy was generated in 1990" is already a sentence.

that's about the best i can do with regard to explaining this. if this still isn't clear to you, i'd suggest forgetting about "rules" and just looking at the patterns in a large number of correctly written comparison sentences. then it should all make more sense.
(this is how the human brain wants to learn language anyway: by recognition and imitation, not by "rules". you'll find that things become much easier if you follow that tendency, rather than trying to resist it.)

Dear Ron,

I saw your explanation on this sentence:

more than 10 times as much energy is generated through wind power now than that was generated 1990.

Can I interpret the wrongness as follows:

As you have mentioned in other posts that " if you're going to use "that" to REPLACE a noun, then it needs to be followed by a MODIFIER, not a subject + verb.", so I think the same rule can also be applied here.
E.g the amount of money I have is twice that you have.
" that " here refers to the mount of money and is the object of VERB have with no modifer.

Since in this sentence, "that" (refers to energy) is functioned as a Subject without any modifier, it is wrong according to above rule.

Am I correct in understanding the wrongness of that sentence?

Look forward to your reply and Many thanks always!

hi ron
i am still confused, can you please clarify the mistakes in the example (purple things) ?
i can not find.

The simplified expression is: X is twice Y
The word that "that" is replacing is the full noun phrase X: "the amount of money I have"

So the meaning is:
the amount of money I have is twice that (the amount of money I have) you have