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I see the statement that:

Similar to how a car needs fuel to run, a computer needs electricity to power it.

In this case, I comprehend its meaning. However, I don't really get why "similar" is used at the top of the sentence here. If "similar to how" is an adveribial clause, my searches don't find any results or any envidence. Likewise, I can't figure out clearly any type of reduced relative clause.

KillingTime
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noname18
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    Try searching for similarly to how; you might find more results. (Although it does look like a lot of people nowadays use similar to how when grammatically it really should be similarly to how.) – Peter Shor May 14 '23 at 14:02
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    Similar introduces an adverb clause; note that it can go at the end just as well as the beginning: A computer needs electricity to power it, similar to how a car needs fuel to run. Not very elegant, but clear enough. Similar to how is not a clause, however; how introduces a complement (noun) clause, an embedded question. That complement is the object of the preposition to, and similar is the remains of the predicate adjective from the relative clause (which is) similar to... reduced by Whiz-Deletion. – John Lawler May 14 '23 at 14:06
  • Sketchy source of model English. If you can read, you know a computer's electric. – Yosef Baskin May 14 '23 at 14:21
  • So, as I guess, "which is similar to" modifies for "it" in "power it" right? Other examples, " Similar to how we defined a unique index for each word when making one-hot vectors, we also need to define an index for each word when using embeddings." Again, if not using the whiz-reduction, what might the word "which is similar" be complement for? @JohnLawler – noname18 May 14 '23 at 18:26
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    The cited example seems a bit clumsy to me. I'd much prefer *Just as a car needs fuel to run, a computer needs electricity to power it.* – FumbleFingers May 14 '23 at 19:21
  • @FumbleFingers When one considers other possible substitutes for this, e.g. "akin to how", or "like how", or just "as", with their varying parts of speech, one begins to wonder at the reason "similar" in this context is not considered to function as a preposition, like "like" might be. Sometimes English grammar seems inconsistent and petty. – Biblasia May 14 '23 at 23:12
  • @Biblasia: There are "real" inconsistencies, in that what's considered "grammatically valid" by some speakers might be rejected by others. But so far as I know, the general trend is towards accepting all syntactic constructions and vocabulary used by a significant number of native speakers (regardless of what English teachers from the preceding generation might think). If that leads to "inconsistencies", it's the linguists and grammarians who need to come up with better categorizations. In the final analysis, correct language is defined by what native speakers say, not what teachers think. – FumbleFingers May 15 '23 at 11:02
  • 'Similar to how…' might not actually be wrong but it surely is unidiomatic.

    Can you find no better examples?

     – Robbie Goodwin Sep 16 '23 at 18:39

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