Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!usenet.pasdenom.info!news.albasani.net!news.swapon.de!feedme.ziplink.net!border4.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!npeer01.iad.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!spln!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!news2 From: Michael Wojcik Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: OT language stuff (was Re: Class.forName().newInstance() vs new) Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2011 11:58:41 -0400 Organization: Micro Focus Lines: 22 Message-ID: References: <969kqsFjduU5@mid.individual.net> <4lPLp.1825$Q35.13@newsfe13.iad> NNTP-Posting-Host: p70586e4882506efb7197c3c02650a1454384a18326729e22.newsdawg.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.23) Gecko/20090812 Thunderbird/2.0.0.23 Mnenhy/0.7.5.0 In-Reply-To: Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.java.programmer:5583 John B. Matthews wrote: > In article , > Arved Sandstrom wrote: >> >> "The less" in my construction actually operates as a single unit. >> Although I'm not sure what part of a sentence it corresponds to. > > I read "less" as an adverb modifying "able", moved to enhance > parallelism: "The higher ... the less able ..." Combine that idea with Arved's. "the [quantifier] ... the [quantifier] ..." is one of a set of idiomatic phrasal constructions acting as a pair of parallel adverbs, typically modifying an adjective following the second quantifier. The idiomatic phrase "the [quantifier]" can serve as an adverb on its own, too, as in "none the less". -- Michael Wojcik Micro Focus Rhetoric & Writing, Michigan State University