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Pastimes : SI Grammar and Spelling Lab -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rambi who wrote (909)	2/21/1998 6:16:00 AM
From: Jack Clarke	Respond to of 4710

Penni, >>Making fun of people who think they are smarter than I I'm not sure which side of the argument you are on, Penni, but I believe the above is correct as stated. There is indeed an implied "am", and "than" is actually a conjunction and not a preposition. There is certainly ample evidence in spoken English of prepositional use of "than", as in: "That guy is a hell of a lot bigger than me!" But it is grammatically incorrect. Now it doesn't sound so bad to me, perhaps, because of my French exposure. The French use "than" (que) as a preposition (plus grand que moi) and also have a disjunctive use of the personal pronoun which permits them to say "That was me" without violating any rules. But we do just that in English, and I predict the rules will change. The prevalent (though grammatically incorrect) use in nonformal English is as follows: Was that you I saw at the game? Yeah, that was me. In very informal English, the response: "Yeah, that was I" would be grammatically correct but stuffy. I think the German does as we do in English, use the nominative after the conjunction: Er ist ebenso groá wie ich. Jack