The following questions were posted in my Personal Messages box but I thought I should share them with Forum members along with my answers.
Questions from mcdv, new Forum member (October 14, 2012):
Hi, Mr. Carillo.
I've always been a fan, and I've always wondered how you got to be what you are today--a notable grammarian. Well, anyway, I just wanted to ask you a few questions on equative comparisons. Below are my questions on the subject:
1. Which of the following sentences are correct?
1.1 Mario is as much a thinker as a believer.
1.2 Mario is as much a thinker as he is a believer.
2. How do you make the sentence below work for a plural subject?
2.1 A mother is as much a manager as a worker.
2.2 Mothers are as much .........
Thank you for your time, and an advance merry Christmas to you.
My reply to mcdv:
Both of the following sentences you presented are grammatically correct:
1.1 “Mario is as much a thinker as a believer.”
1.2 “Mario is as much a thinker as he is a believer.”
Version 1.2 is the full-blown, scrupulously correct equative construction, making the structures “Mario is… a thinker” and “he is a believer” as equal, balanced, and parallel as possible in the grammatical equation.
On the other hand, Version 1.1 is the elided version of Version 1.2, which is the omission (“elision” is the term in linguistics for this) of a grammatical element in the second coordinate clause—in this case the pronoun “he” in “he is a believer”—without adversely affecting the sense and grammatical integrity of the sentence.
As to your second question, here’s one way for the sentence “A mother is as much a manager as a worker” to work when the subject “mother” is made plural:
“Mothers are as much managers as workers.”
There’s a smoother way, though. It is to make that sentence notionally plural but grammatically singular by preceding the noun “mother” with the adjective “every”:
“Every mother is as much a manager as a worker.”
I’m not really a believer in extremely advanced Christmas greetings—heck, it’s only October 15!—but since you’ve already made the greeting, it would be impolite of me not to wish you the same in return: “Merry Christmas!”
