§6 Comparative clauses 2016 Comparative clauses
The prepositions than and as often take as complement a distinctive type
of subordinate clause called a comparative clause:
[19] She did better in the exam than we'd thought she would.
ii The treatment was less painful than it was last time.
iii The pool is nearly as wide as it is long.
iv They come fro m the same part of Britain as I come from.[superiority]
[inferiority]
[scalar equality]
[non-scalar equality]There are two points about the terminology used here that should be noted.
First, 'comparative' has a broader sense in 'comparative clause' than elsewhere.
Comparative forms are always associated with comparisons of superiority,
whereas comparative clauses are found in all the types of comparison considered
above, as indicated in the annotations on the right.
Second, 'comparative clause' applies to the subordinate clause expressing the
secondary term in the comparison, not to the matrix clause that expresses the
comparison as a whole.Comparative clauses constitute one of the three major kinds of finite subordinate
clause that we introduced in Ch. 10, § 1. What distinguishes them from relative and
content clauses is that they are obligatorily reduced in certain ways relative to the
structure of main clauses.
In [19i] the complement of would is left understood. We could add do, but there
would still be a missing adjunct. The meaning can be given as "She did x well in
the exam; we'd thought she would do y well; x> y"; but the "y well" part cannot
be syntactically overt.
Similarly in [19ii] there is an obligatorily missing predicative complement; it's
understood as "y painful".
It is not so obvious that we have reduction in [l9iii], since it is long can occur as
an unreduced main clause. Nevertheless, in this comparative construction there is
a missing degree modifier corresponding to the variable y: "The pool is nearly
x wide; it is y long; x = y". The implicit presence of a degree modifier of long makes
it impossible to add an overt one: *The pool is nearly as wide as it is very long.
Finally, in [l9iv] the preposition fro m occurs without a complement. This can't
happen in canonical clauses. Again, a complement is understood ("She comes
from x part of the country; I come from y part of the country; x = y"), but it can
not be syntactically expressed. This represents a somewhat different case of
preposition stranding from that discussed in Ch. 7, §5, since there is no corre
sponding construction in which the preposition is fronted.
A further case of as in non-scalar comparison of equality
In the examples of preposition as + comparative clause given so far, the as is in con
struction with the adverb as marking scalar equality (as in [19iii]) or with the