_As_ replaced by _than_

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Oct 18, 2011, at 11:14 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>
> On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 10:03 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
>> i suspect that this is another case of the extension of "than" as the marker of the second element in constructions with the semantics of comparison (other examples discussed on this list a while back).
>>
>
> My thought, exactly. The effort that people put into messing things up
> is phenomenal!;-)

not really messing things up, but simplifying them (with semantic motivation).  the result is non-standard, of course.
>
> OTOH, I don't think that strings like _real and larger than_ count,
> since the _than_ is immediately preceded by a comparative. That may be
> a different, more-obvious phenomenon.

"real and larger than" is in there for context.  there's nothing notable about it.

arnold

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