Sentence Correction

Freedman's survey showed that people living in small towns and rural
areas consider themselves no happier than do people living in big cities.

(A) no happier than do people living
(B) not any happier than do people living
(C) not any happier than do people who live
(D) no happier than are people who are living
(E) not as happy as are people who live

OA is A

Can anyone help me determine the proper usage of the two?

Source is Gayathari's SC notes.

When I tried this question I did not focus on difference between usage of NO and NOT
The first thing I concentrated on was the idiom "Consider X Y" ,where X is "themselves" and Y should be some noun.
The only noun in the underlined portion is "people". So I selected A.
D is wordy , so I ruled out this option.

NO should always be used with Nouns. eg I have no money.
NOT may be used with action .eg "I am not kidding" (I am not sure about "NOT" . There could be other usage too)

Freedman's survey showed that people living in small towns and rural
areas consider themselves no happier than do people living in big cities.

(A) no happier than do people living
(B) not any happier than do people living
(C) not any happier than do people who live
(D) no happier than are people who are living
(E) not as happy as are people who live


First look at the sentence, we know that this is going 2 be a comparison sentence and moreover we are seeing THAN usage...so its confirm that this is comparison.......Next we should know whether living or Live....since non underlined part is Living so why to change the tense....so it should be living not live....This eliminates options E and C......B is wrong because not any happier is wordy(any is not required here).....Now left with A and D....D is wrong because of 2 reasons a) are is wrong usage because both the people in comparison are different i.e they are not same.2) WHO is not needed here because generally we will use relative clause when we want to specify an action that happened at a different point of time....here no such things are present....

So my answer is A here....

OA?

@Chaitanya_1986

since non underlined part is Living so why to change the tense....so it should be living not live

DO u think "living" is acting as a verb here????

smackmartine wrote:When I tried this question I did not focus on difference between usage of NO and NOT
The first thing I concentrated on was the idiom "Consider X Y" ,where X is "themselves" and Y should be some noun.
The only noun in the underlined portion is "people". So I selected A.
D is wordy , so I ruled out this option.

NO should always be used with Nouns. eg I have no money.
NOT may be used with action .eg "I am not kidding" (I am not sure about "NOT" . There could be other usage too)

How can u apply Consider X,Y...idiom...all choices have 2 nouns: Themselves and people...how u are creating a split using this idiom????

Atul,

If not living what else do you think the verb can be???

Chaitanya_1986 wrote:Atul,

If not living what else do you think the verb can be???

"Living" is not the verb...-ing forms alone can never be a verb, u need a form of TO BE to make them verb..for ex: are living, is living

Here verb is "Consider"

People consider themselves...

Yes chaitanya_1986 "living" is not a verb (sorry to disappoint you). its actually an adjective. however are living and is living are transitive verb forms. showing the state of the verb "are" and "is".


A is the best

I would appreciate if some expert step in and explain the choices..

I think A and B are the only contenders as they are parallel.

I chose B and would like to know why A is better besides wordiness or if that's the only reason.
Please enlighten.

THanks!

No is used in front of nouns (no cheeseburgers) or noun phrases (no little red pieces of paper)to mean "not any", as well as a single-word answer to binary questions (Would you like a slice of pie?).

Not is used to negate verbs. Because negative constructions require the verbs are or do, you will also hear it apparently negating adverbs (not usually, not very) in the answers to questions (Do you like pie? No, not much) where the rest of the sentence from the question asked is rarely repeated.

Jim@Grockit wrote:No is used in front of nouns (no cheeseburgers) or noun phrases (no little red pieces of paper)to mean "not any", as well as a single-word answer to binary questions (Would you like a slice of pie?).

Not is used to negate verbs. Because negative constructions require the verbs are or do, you will also hear it apparently negating adverbs (not usually, not very) in the answers to questions (Do you like pie? No, not much) where the rest of the sentence from the question asked is rarely repeated.

Thanks for this useful information, but can u please clear, why exactly Op D is wrong??? is it because of the relative clause WHO or the use of the verb ARE to compare actions??? or is there any other thing????

Thanks a lot.

@Jim

If no is to mean not any, then is no happier preferred not any happier??

Is this always the case?

Thanks.

hi atul,

I feel D is wrong because if you see initially the sentence says "people consider themselves" but in D if you notice it says "than are people" i.e in one part the sentence says "people consider themselves" and in other part the sentence says "people are" , both the things are not parallel to each other...........please correct me if i am wrong........

atulmangal wrote:

Jim@Grockit wrote:No is used in front of nouns (no cheeseburgers) or noun phrases (no little red pieces of paper)to mean "not any", as well as a single-word answer to binary questions (Would you like a slice of pie?).

Not is used to negate verbs. Because negative constructions require the verbs are or do, you will also hear it apparently negating adverbs (not usually, not very) in the answers to questions (Do you like pie? No, not much) where the rest of the sentence from the question asked is rarely repeated.

Thanks for this useful information, but can u please clear, why exactly Op D is wrong??? is it because of the relative clause WHO or the use of the verb ARE to compare actions??? or is there any other thing????

Thanks a lot.

It's the verb are, which would work if the sentence had been They are no happier than are the people who [whatever] . . . but we need do to parallel consider.

@Jim

If no is to mean not any, then is no happier preferred not any happier??

Is this always the case?

Thanks.

There is no grammatical difference between no happier and not any happier in real English. No is preferred because it is shorter, but "longer" versions of things are sometimes preferred for emphasis (We do not have any extra money, anywhere).