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mikemcgarry
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Ellipsis & Substitution 13 Sep 2016, 16:12
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vaidhaichaturvedi
Hello,

Could you kindly tell me does omitted verb has to be same in number
e.g.
John runs as fast as his brothers.

as you have mentioned omitted verb should be present in sentence .here omitted verb is "run" whereas verb present in sentence is runs.

Thanks in advance.
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Dear vaidhaichaturvedi,
I'm happy to respond. :-) That's a great question!

In general, the omitted verb does not have to match the original verb in number. Thus, your sentence is 100% correct.
John runs as fast as his brothers.
It's perfectly fine that the original verb, "runs," is singular and the implicit omitted verb, "run," is plural.

If the original verb and the omitted verb differed in tense, we would have to use the auxiliary verb "do" and its forms to indicate the change in tense.
John runs as fast as his great-mother did, but John's great uncle, in his prime, ran faster than John does now.
in general, the auxiliary verb "do" and its forms are excellence short substitutes for a verb or an entire verb phrase. See:
Repeating Verb Phrases on the GMAT

Does all this make sense?
Mike :-)
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Ellipsis & Substitution 12 Sep 2019, 22:41
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thanks mikemcgarry for clarifying

so i am paraphrasing please do correct me if i am wrong

I have never seen an aardvark, but last year my father did

the above sentence is correct ( which is wrongly stated as false by souvik and egmat)
it is correct by the rule explained by you


thanks for clarifying



mikemcgarry
vaidhaichaturvedi
Hello,

Could you kindly tell me does omitted verb has to be same in number
e.g.
John runs as fast as his brothers.

as you have mentioned omitted verb should be present in sentence .here omitted verb is "run" whereas verb present in sentence is runs.

Thanks in advance.
Dear vaidhaichaturvedi,
I'm happy to respond. :-) That's a great question!

In general, the omitted verb does not have to match the original verb in number. Thus, your sentence is 100% correct.
John runs as fast as his brothers.
It's perfectly fine that the original verb, "runs," is singular and the implicit omitted verb, "run," is plural.

If the original verb and the omitted verb differed in tense, we would have to use the auxiliary verb "do" and its forms to indicate the change in tense.
John runs as fast as his great-mother did, but John's great uncle, in his prime, ran faster than John does now.
in general, the auxiliary verb "do" and its forms are excellence short substitutes for a verb or an entire verb phrase. See:
Repeating Verb Phrases on the GMAT

Does all this make sense?
Mike :-)
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Ellipsis & Substitution 17 Oct 2020, 11:29
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egmat
You are correct @fametop. Such omissions and substitutions are tested in comparison based sentences. You may also find the same in parallelism based sentences as well. Let's begin the understanding using some simple examples:

Tom solves SC questions more efficiently than Marie does.
Here "does" is used in place of "solves" - Substitution

Tom solves SC questions more efficiently than Marie.
Here "does" has been omitted. The verb can be omitted from the comparison since the sentence does not result in any ambiguity after the omission. So as you can see above, such omission (also called as ellipsis) is done to make the sentence more crisp. And how do we make the sentence more crisp - by not repeating certain words that have already appeared once in the sentence. This applies really well when we have comparison or parallel constructions involving verbs. And hence we come to the main take away.

You can omit the words till the point the meaning is clear.



Lets take another set of sentences:

Tom adores his wife more than his mother does.
Here "does" is used in place of "adores" - Substitution

Tom adores his wife more than his mother.
Here "does" has been omitted. But is the meaning clear? What is the comparison here? Are we comparing how much Tom adores his wife vs how much he adores his mother. Or are we comparing how much Tom adores his wife vs how much his mother adores his wife. That is one of the two following sentences:

1: Tom adores his wife more than his mother does.
2: Tom adores his wife more than he adores his mother.

I hope this example set helped reinforce the takeaway stated above.

Now lets take up the examples in your question:

I have never seen an aardvark, but last year my father did
Now this sentence is wrong. And here is why. Here ellipsis/omission has not been applied correctly. Basically the author has omitted the verb - see. (did see = saw) as shown below:
I have never seen an aardvark, but last year my father DID SEE.

But notice, the verb "see" does not appear as is anywhere in the sentence. And you cannot omit something that does not exist.

Now let's take this other example sentence:
Our cars were designed to inspire envy, and they are
What could have been omitted here? There is a verb from "to inspire". So the verb form "inspire" could have been omitted. But when I place this supposedly omitted word what do I get:
Our cars were designed to inspire envy, and they are inspire. - This is absolutely incorrect.
Doing the same in the correct version - here is what we get.
Our cars were designed to inspire envy, and they do inspire
Notice how putting back the omitted word makes perfect sense in the sentence.

Here are the other sentences in your post. I have specified the word that is omitted.
Megumi speaks Japanese better than I do speak. - CORRECT
Megumi has visited more countries than I have visited. - CORRECT
Megumi has more skirts than I do. - Here "do" replaces the verb "have" - CORRECT.

I hope this helps clarify your confusion!
Regards,
Payal
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This is a super helpful article egmat. Thank you.
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Ellipsis & Substitution 01 Sep 2021, 13:50
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Hi mikemcgarry and egmat,

What about this sentence -
Her son grew faster than she had grown.

You said that if we have a shift in the tense we must you to do verb, but here we can't you "to do" verb in past perfect because it will miss the meaning no? we also can't change it to did because they didn't grow together. So how do you think this sentence comply with the rules you've mentioned?

Thanks!
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Ellipsis & Substitution 25 Dec 2024, 20:17
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