vishalpathak wrote:He is as depressed as they, but he soldiered onward anyway
I have read that for ellipsis to be correct, the missing word should exactly appear in the part of the sentence before the missing word.
In the above sentence, 'are' is missing but 'are' does not appear anywhere in the sentence. So I feel that this Ellipsis is flawed. The source of this is a flash card and it states that this statement is correct
Regards,
Vishal
ELLIPSIS is the omission of words whose presence is understood.
When two SIMPLE tense verbs are compared, it is common for the verb in the second clause to be omitted.
Correct:
John runs as fast as Mary.
Conveyed meaning:
John runs as fast as Mary [runs].
The verb in brackets is omitted, but its presence is understood.
The two verbs do not have to agree in number.
Correct:
John runs as fast as his brothers.
Conveyed meaning:
John runs as fast as his brothers [run].
The verb in brackets is omitted, but its presence is understood.
Note that it is not NECESSARY to omit the second verb.
Correct:
John runs as fast as his brothers run.
Correct:
John runs as fast as his brothers do.
Awkward:
John runs as fast as they.
Technically, this sentence is correct, because the intended comparison is clear.
But ending a clause with a subject pronoun (
he, she, they, etc.) feels awkward to most native speakers.
For this reason, most native speakers would NOT omit the second verb:
Correct:
John runs as fast as they run.
Correct:
John runs as fast as they do.
Awkward:
He is as depressed as they.
As noted above, this sentence is technically correct, but most native speakers would not omit the second verb:
Correct:
He is as depressed as they are.
Some verb forms consist of a
helping verb + participle:
is running
have eaten
Here,
is and
have serve as helping verbs, while
running and
eaten serve as participles.
When a PARTICIPLE is omitted, it should appear in the same form earlier in the sentence.
Answer choice:
The wines have been priced to sell, and they are.
Here, the intended meaning is as follows:
The wines have been priced to sell, and they are [selling].
But because
selling does not appear earlier in the sentence, it should not be omitted from the second clause.
Thus, the answer choice should be eliminated.
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