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In this case "than" seems correct because it's short for "affect boys differently than [it affects] girls", right? In order to re-order that to use "from" you'
by mtinkerhess 11y ago
In this case "than" seems correct because it's short for "affect boys differently than [it affects] girls", right?
In order to re-order that to use "from" you'd have to do something like "... the effect of which upon boys has been found to be different from that upon girls."
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- mturmon 11y agoThat's the way I read it also. Omitting words in a parallel structure like this is a form of "elliptical construction" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis_(linguistics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis_(linguistics)
- ggchappell 11y agoInteresting point. So you're saying that "girls" is not really being used as a noun phrase, but rather as an abbreviated clause. Thus we use the conjunction "than", while we would use the preposition "from" with a real honest-to-goodness noun phrase. "Than" is a preposition, too, but only when referencing a comparative. So, "A cow has more than one stomach." But, "Cows are different from people." OTOH, I guess you would prefer, "Cows eat different food than people," (?) since "people" in that sentence is really short for "people eat". I'll have to ponder this. Thanks for a thought-provoking comment. EDIT. And perhaps the source of all the actually poor uses of "different than", is that many people mentally classify "different" as a comparative.