rajarams wrote:
Isn't an -er form always used for comparison between two things? When the sentence says "stranger" what is the strangeness compared with?
I understand we can pick the OA for reasons other than this. But wanted to know if the rule above is not always applicable.
First, you are correct that S/V agreement and parallelism get us all the way to the answer so we don't even have to deal with stranger vs. strangest.
We usually deal with stranger/strangest in comparisons. "Truth is stranger than fiction." [Use "stranger" or "more strange" when comparing 2 items]. "Love is the strangest of all human emotions." [Use "strangest" or "most strange" when comparing more than 2 items].
In this sentence, however, stranger isn't actually really used as a comparison. Think about the word "strange" as an attribute or even a scale. On one side of the scale we have things that are not strange at all. On the other side, we have things that are super strange. This sentence is talking about items that would fit on the "stranger" side of the scale. Notice, these aren't necessarily the "strangest" items, but rather interesting items that would be considered "stranger" than normal.
Does that help?
KW
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