Abstract
The issue in this chapter is how to handle comparisons in English, specifically that treat the small word “than” as a conjunction as in the sentence “Helen is smarter than I” or as a preposition in the sentence “Robert is taller than me.” Traditional grammarians look to the past and insist that “than” is not a preposition and that proper English demands “I” (subjective case) as the terminal word in a grammatical comparison. Revisionists insist that “than” is a proposition and that me is the correct object of “than.” A clinching argument emerges to establish that traditionalists misspeak or write incorrectly; hence, the revisionists come out on top.
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Notes
- 1.
Baugh , A History of the English Language, page 336.
- 2.
Fowler , A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, pages 628–30.
- 3.
Pinker , The Sense of Style, Loc 3956.
- 4.
Huddleson and Pullum , The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, page 731. Emphasis added.
- 5.
Partridge , Abusage and Usage, page 330.
- 6.
Gilbert Ryle , “Ordinary Language” in Chappell, Ordinary Language, page 33.
- 7.
Roy Peter Clark , The Glamour of Grammar: A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical English (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2010), page 225. Emphasis added.
- 8.
Ann Raimes, Pocket Key for Writers (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), page 139. Emphasis added.
- 9.
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- 10.
Guide to Grammar and Writing, grammar .com.ccc.edu. The parenthetic sentence in this passage is at the center and circumference of section (3) below.
- 11.
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- 12.
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- 13.
The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, volume I, page 40.
- 14.
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- 15.
Dante, La Vita Nuova (c. 1292–94), chapter II. Harold Bloom is the source for this evaluation of Beatrice throughout the Divine Comedy. See Harold Bloom , The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1994), page 77.
- 16.
This translation is mine.
- 17.
Dante, La Vita Nuova, trans. and intro. Mark Musa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973), page 3.
- 18.
Graziana Lazzarino , Prego!, second edition (New York: Random House, 1984), page 208.
- 19.
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- 20.
Oliver Wendell Holmes to Sir Frederick Pollock (August 30, 1929).
- 21.
Plato , Republic, Book I, 353a-354c. See also my remarks about Plato in the Epilogue.
- 22.
John Henry Newman , The Idea of a University (1852), Discourse V: “Knowledge Its Own End” section 1.
- 23.
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- 24.
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- 25.
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- 26.
John Stuart Mill , Utilitarianism (1861), second edition, ed. George Sher (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001), page 4. Emphasis added.
- 27.
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- 28.
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- 29.
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- 30.
Pinker , The Sense of Style, Loc 394.
- 31.
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- 32.
J.L. Austin , How to do Things with Words (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), page 3.
- 33.
Fowler , A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, page 333. Crystal reminds us in his introduction that Fowler in his writing is not always consistent with his preference for short words, page xxi.
- 34.
Pinker , The Sense of Style, Loc 376.
- 35.
Pinker , The Sense of Style, Loc 1687. Emphasis added. “Tree” refers here to the relation between substantives and modifiers in what is close to a successor to what we once we once described as a diagramed sentence.
- 36.
Pinker , The Sense of Style, Loc 1762
- 37.
Pinker , The Sense of Style, Loc 1761.
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Silver, B. (2018). Comparisons That Go Wrong. In: Grammar, Philosophy, and Logic. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66257-2_3
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