In English, it is often difficult to tell whether phrases, such as as or other than, is acting as a preposition or conjunction, or just a combination of individual words. This slip also occurs with more than, is found in grammatically balanced compound sentences as well as sentences with subordinate clauses. (If any of these are confusing, read on. We’ll cover them all.) Essentially, the role of more than depends on the type of sentence in which it is being used.
Get ready for some serious grammar instruction.
from thanitself, is often used in English as an adverb to indicate interest, degree, or precision.
I would rather not go.
It was quite late.
She sings pretty well.
He has a pretty good voice.
She is a doctor, or rather a surgeon.
It took a while, but eventually grammarians and lexicographers understood the message and realized that more than has meaning as a separate grammatical unit. The key to say whether more than To be a conjunction or preposition is to look at the words that come before and after it.
As a combination, parallel grammatical structures appear on each side of . more than. When used to conjugate verbs, it indicates that something is done instead of something else—and the verbs are inflected in the same way. Usually, the base form of the verb is used (usually with ARRIVE omit the following verb more than).
For exercise, I walk rather than run.
He decided to call instead of texting.
Instead of fixing the car, I prefer to buy a new one.
In addition, the conjunction more than Connect nouns, adjectives, adverbs and prepositions of parallel form. In such cases, more than indicates choice or negation.
I drink coffee rather than tea.
He buys red peppers rather than green ones.
She eats slowly rather than fast.
Can we come on Saturday instead of (on) Sunday?
As a preposition, more than synonymous with instead of and the beginning of the subordinate clause (the clause that cannot stand alone as a sentence) has the present participle (the -ing form) of a verb that serves as a noun (in other words, a gerund). When more than function as prepositions, the verbs in the sentence are not parallel.
Instead of driving, he cycled to work.
Instead of using dried herbs, he chooses fresh ones from the garden.
She takes the blame instead of blaming others.
In short: when more than have parallel elements before and after it, like walk / run from the example above, it is wearing its matching hat. You’ll know its prepositional cap is close when you see the difference between the verb forms—as in drive / drive-And more than followed by a -ing verbs to form a prepositional phrase. Now, as always, hats off to the grammar!
Categories: Usage Notes
Source: vothisaucamau.edu.vn
