Alternative Explanations

Morning, or Spring by Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966)

      Often, within the KISS approach, more than one explanation is acceptable. Rather than having one explanation forced on them, students should be allowed to choose the explanation that makes most sense to them. This page is devoted to some of the cases which show up frequently, but the primary point is the principle -- there is often more than one "right" answer. *

     Different people often see prepositional phrases as modifying different words in a sentence. For example, in "The Ant and the Grasshopper," Aesop writes:

Some people will see "{for winter}" as an adjective modifying "food"; others will want to consider it as an adverb (of purpose) explaining "lay up." Because both explanations are within the rules of KISS grammar, both should be considered correct.

     As I frequently tell students, little words cause the most problems. My favorite dictionary (Webster's New Collegiate, 1961) claims that "than" is a conjunction, not a preposition. It seems, however, both more logical and easier to consider it as both, depending on the context.
     Because "than" is often used with ellipsis, it is sometimes necessary to consider it as a subordinate conjunction. My favorite example of this is a sentence written by a young lady:

Expanded, this sentence means 

That is not what the woman meant, but a number of young men may have, as a result of the sentence, had thoughts in that direction. When we view "than" as a conjunction, we need to consider the full S/V pattern that follows it.
     But should we always consider "than" as a conjunction? If I write:

do I necessarily mean:

What if mine is bad? What if both hers and mine are bad, but hers is simply a better bad than mine? To me, there are cases in which the explanation using the preposition simply makes more sense.
     It is, of course, also easier, especially because the KISS approach begins with prepositional phrases. At that level of study, I would never consider as incorrect an answer that marked "than" as a preposition. On the other hand, at that level, I would never consider a "than" that was not marked as a preposition as an incorrect answer either. In other words, at the level of prepositional phrases, I would simply ignore the problem of "than." Once students are learning about clauses, we would confront the problem, solving it, as always in the KISS approach, by appeals to meaning.
     The following example from Aesop's fables clearly suggests that, despite the dictionary, "than" can be considered a preposition:

"There is always someone worse off than yourself." (Aesop's "The Hares and the Frogs")
["Yourself" cannot be viewed here as the subject of an ellipsed clause -- "yourself *is bad off.* Certainly it makes more sense to see "than yourself" as a prepositional phrase.]

     Verbal tags are words which look like prepositions, but which do not function as such. Consider:

She ran up the hill; he ran up the flag.

If a verb plus verbal tag can be replaced with one 
      word ("ran up" = "raised"), (More examples.)
or if the verbal tag can be left out without major 
      loss of meaning ("Come on" = "Come"),
then the tag is simply considered either as an adverb 
      or as part of the verb phrase.

can be analyzed either as "were looking {at the doggies}" or as an S / V / DO pattern: "They / were looking at / the doggies."

Examples of other verbs that can replace verbal tags:

cry out = scream
go on = continue
look like = resemble
look out for = seek, guard, avoid, watch
put up with = endure
think of = remember
think up = invent
went in = entered
went up = approached

     In a difficult, but wonderful essay called "Examsmanship and the Liberal Arts," William G. Perry distinguishes "cow" (raw facts) and "bull" (the contexts that make facts meaningful). In essence, Perry's bullster understands that facts have meaning only in terms of what Perry refers to as "frames of reference." Put more simply perhaps, Perry argues that facts have different meanings depending on the perspective from which one approaches them. Consider, for example, the following sentence from Ouida's A Dog of Flanders:

And a little child with curling fair hair, sobbing bitterly as she clung to her father's arm, cried aloud, "Oh, Nello, come! We have all ready for thee. The Christ-child's hands are full of gifts, and the old piper will play for us; and the mother says thou shalt stay by the earth and burn nuts with us all the Noël week long — yes, even to the Feast of the Kings! And Patrasche will be so happy! Oh, Nello, wake and come!"

... child ... cried aloud, "[DO Oh, Nello, come!][DO We have all ready for thee.][DO The Christ-child's hands are full of gifts,] and [DO the old piper will play for us;] and [DO the mother says [DO thou shalt stay by the earth and burn nuts with us all the Noël week long — yes, even to the Feast of the Kings!]][DO And Patrasche will be so happy!][DO Oh, Nello, wake and come!]" /

... child ... cried aloud, "[DO Oh, Nello, come!]/ We have all ready for thee. /The Christ-child's hands are full of gifts, / and  the old piper will play for us; / and the mother says [DO thou shalt stay by the earth and burn nuts with us all the Noël week long — yes, even to the Feast of the Kings!]/ And Patrasche will be so happy! /Oh, Nello, wake and come!" /