Quick question, internets!

[sofiaviolet]

Which sounds more correct?

But he was only as tall as her, and prone to slouching.

But he was only as tall as she, and prone to slouching.

I am hoping my professor was trying to correct it to "she was" and just forgot to write in half of it. "She was," btw, will be my compromise between his wtaf correction and my increasingly-acceptable original.

Comments

[thesamefire.livejournal.com]

well, look at it this way:

It sounds pretty awful to say "...as tall as I/he" alone, you REALLY need that "was". "She" sounds better alone than the other two, for some reason, which is why this is tricky.

Can I ask what the preceding sentence is?

[sofiaviolet]

In the original:
"She expected to have to look up at her rescuer because, well, rescuer."

Amended to:
"She expected to have to look up at her rescuer because, well, rescuer. Knight in shining armor."


And prior to this, she discovered that her wallet was missing, and he paid for her coffee (hence rescuer - she is being overdramatic, but she needs her fucking coffee, geez), and soon he will begin angling for a date or something.

[thesamefire.livejournal.com]

I kind of dislike the flow of "He was only as tall as she was"; the repeated "was" is the problem. I think "her" is more than fine, given this context.

Also, I would assume you're writing fiction? Fuck prescriptivism and go with what sounds right. Pronoun case and ellipsis in English is a giant mess and the linguists don't really have an answer for what's up, anyway. I would only worry if this was supposed to be in a very formal register.

[sofiaviolet]

Fiction indeed.

All right then. I will leave it.

... it's just not a writing class if absolutely none of your professor's recommendations make you go omgwtf.

[serpent-sky.livejournal.com]

The latter sounds correct, and is correct.

She was is an okay compromise, I guess, but the "was" isn't necessary.

[sofiaviolet]

I think the problem is that I think it sounds weird to end a clause with a subject pronoun:

"taller than I/he/she/we/they" = wait, what?
"taller than I am/he is/she is/we are/they are" = okay

"You" gets a free pass.

[thelemic.livejournal.com]

'as her' sounds more right to me...?

[sofiaviolet]

When I say both out loud, it sounds better to me, too, although if I think about it, I can see why "she" is more grammatically correct. But I'm a bit more concerned with how something sounds than how correct it is, especially since I will be reading this out loud to the class - in fact, I would not be surprised if I said "her" even if I did make the suggested correction. I mean, other people have written their stories with almost no contractions and then used contractions when they read them to us.

I think I will poll my classmates on Friday.

[tuesdaysgone.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure door #2 is the correct grammatical structure.

[sofiaviolet]

This, I agree with.

But I cannot in good conscience end a clause with a subject pronoun. It just sounds wrong, in my head and especially out loud (a concern because of the format of the class).

[tuesdaysgone.livejournal.com]

The 'compromise' sentence you've mentioned sounds fine when I read it out loud. I don't usually think about that kind of thing because I so rarely read aloud! (Yet. Cody's starting to get to the age where he actually pays attention when you talk to him, which means I can start reading to him!)

It's so interesting to see how everyone phrases things, though. I'd have probably expressed the same thought with "but he was no taller than she was."

[sofiaviolet]

Hm. Your way might be even better. Will ponder. I want whichever better emphasizes that she is surprised that they is more or less the same height - she thought he'd be taller.

Inasmuch as she thought about it, anyway.

[lovelypoet.livejournal.com]

I think "Her" is right as this could be the objective form of she. Just try reducing it to a simpler sentence and present tense. "He is as tall as her."

No matter what other decoration you add, you're still using him as the subject and her as the object.

Also, the comma after her is technically unnecessary as "prone to slouching" is a dependent clause relating back to "he was"

[sofiaviolet]

Hm. Like I said in one of the other replies, I'm going to ask my class what they think.

As long as the comma isn't thoroughly incorrect, I think I'll leave it. It's a sound thing - when I read that out loud, I put enough of a pause there that I write in the comma. Although maybe not. You've got me thinking. ^-^

[thesamefire.livejournal.com]

yeah, I also like the comma there; it keeps the "prone to slouching" thing as a bit of an afterthought, or with an implicit "...at that", which I quite like the rhythm of.

[vixalicious]

The second one is correct. But I would probably revise the entire sentence to something less wieldy, like 'They were nearly the same height, and he was prone to slouching.'

[sofiaviolet]

I'll probably poke at it some more, but in context, reworking it exactly as you suggest takes away a bit of the information I'm trying to get across - I think it's the missing "only" or "just" or whatever. She genuinely expected to have to look up, even just a little bit, and she doesn't, and it's weird (and about to become weirder - she is used to liking masculine guys, and he just isn't that, not at all).

[go-gentle.livejournal.com]

In class yesterday, one of my professors informed us that in English, the default case is accusative, so in situation where case is not decided by the verbs, etc, accusative should be used. (His example was if someone says "Who wants ice cream?" the natural response is "Me" not "I".) He also claimed that places where case should be default but nominative is used are results of learned hyper-correction, influenced in part by a generation that knew Latin (where NOM is the the default case). I wasn't paying close enough attention to evaluate any of this, though, and he's not really a syntactician, only pretending to be one.

Which is a roundabout way of saying I prefer the first.

[thesamefire.livejournal.com]

SOMEBODY read Schutze (2001) "On the nature of default case"!

I don't know why, but that's one of my favourite articles ever. I guess because it is good reading both lingustically and for a grammar nerd.

[go-gentle.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I pulled that article up, and I don't have time to do more than skim right now, but that looks so interesting.

[thesamefire.livejournal.com]

he just makes a really, really compelling argument! and you get that dose of "OH! an explanation for something I've always kind of wondered about!"