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The given sentence is-

'As no one knows the truth as fully as him, no one but him can provide the testimony.'

As far as the highlighted part is concerned, I improved it as-

'As no one knows the truth as fully as he does, no one but he alone can provide the testimony.'

What's is wrong in the above sentence? I am struck.

Amey Dahale
  • 119
  • Change the first word from As to Since and there's no problem. Three different uses of as, one a conjunction, and the others part of an equative construction. This poses problems since it's not obvious which as's are relating to which other as's. In speech, intonation could be used, but changing as to since gets rid of the confusion. Since is far more common than as in this construction, anyway. – John Lawler Oct 01 '15 at 13:27
  • @FumbleFingers There is but which can be a "a preposition" A bit different element from the link. –  Oct 01 '15 at 13:43
  • @Rathony: I don't see the relevance of *but used as preposition* to the *as [adjective] as [noun]* construction being queried by OP here. *But* I do see the relevance of the duplicate question I linked to. – FumbleFingers Oct 01 '15 at 14:51
  • @FumbleFingers What I meant was **but"" seems to have caused him a confusion here unlike your link. I am not saying it is completely different. –  Oct 01 '15 at 15:01
  • @Rathony: Per my comments to egrunin's post, this question is about accusative / nominative pronouns (him/he), not *but*. – FumbleFingers Oct 01 '15 at 15:48
  • @FumbleFingers I know. But but was involved in changing he to him in 'As no one knows the truth as fully as him, no one but him can provide the testimony. Without no one but, him should be changed to he. That's why i said but could have caused him a confusion there. –  Oct 01 '15 at 16:12
  • @Rathony It's a bit misleading to talk about without no-one but** there, since the grammatical subject of the clause is *no-one. If you were going to remove an "optional component", it would be but him. Of course, the accusative/nominative issue still comes into play, since [no-one but he can](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q=%22no-one+but+he+can%22) is at least as valid as the him* version. – FumbleFingers Oct 01 '15 at 16:19
  • @FumbleFingers He is a foreigner and the sentences appeared in the exam. As no one knows the truth as fully as him, no one but him can provide the testimony needed to clear the accused of the very serious charges. (A)as fully as him, no one but him (B)as fully as he, no one but him (C)as fully as he, no one but he (D)as fully as he does, no one but he (E)as fully as he does, no one but he alone. The question is more confusing because of but rather than as X as Y where Y should start with nominative. Hope you understand my point now. I am not disagreeing with you. –  Oct 01 '15 at 16:33
  • @Rathony: As far as I'm concerned, the question is a duplicate anyway (I assume what OP is really interested in is the as X as Y construction). The no-one but X construction is a completely separate issue, which has no syntactic relevance to the usage under consideration. – FumbleFingers Oct 01 '15 at 16:42
  • @FumbleFingers Yes, you are right. It is a completely separate issue. Pls read the explanation for the right choice. (b) is the correct answer. Explanation: Choice (a) is wrong because the nominative form (he) is required: 'as fully as him' is wrong. Similarly, 'does' is not required as given in other choices. That's why I mentioned it has a bit different element there. –  Oct 01 '15 at 16:51
  • @Rathony: I hesitate to say no-one knows as well as I, but any concept of "correctness" here smacks of pedantry. Idiomatically though, what we can say is that the average native speaker today is far more likely to say no-one knows as well as me. – FumbleFingers Oct 01 '15 at 16:56
  • @FumbleFingers I can't agree with you more. This seemingly hilarious question appeared in the GMAT preparation book in India and other Asian countries. Wow! Isn't it shocking? I know how you feel now as I was as frustrated as you when I first saw this question. –  Oct 01 '15 at 17:10
  • Alright. I got the first part. Can you elaborate on the second part- 'no one but he alone can' ? – Amey Dahale Oct 01 '15 at 19:15
  • I already posted the answer and explanation in the above comment. This question is pretty bad for anyone who wants to learn English seriously. You will know what is wrong with the second part after reading my comment. –  Oct 02 '15 at 04:30

1 Answers1

-1
  • Omit needless words.
  • Make the second clause a consequent of the first.
  • Use parallel construction for reinforcement.

No one else knows the truth as fully, so no one else can provide the testimony.

egrunin
  • 580
  • This is "peripheral writing advice", not an answer to the question as posed. – FumbleFingers Oct 01 '15 at 14:53
  • The subject is 'sentence improvement', the question is 'what is wrong?'. I gave an example of how it might be improved, and explained what I felt was wrong. – egrunin Oct 01 '15 at 14:54
  • The question tags are pronouns and sentence-structure (I don't think 'sentence improvement' would be accepted as an ELU tag). Essentially, OP is asking about the difference between as X as he* [is]* and as X as him*. Sidestepping the issue by rephrasing might be a useful comment, but it's not an answer* in this context. – FumbleFingers Oct 01 '15 at 15:42
  • Ah, I see what you mean. – egrunin Oct 01 '15 at 23:02