English Language Learners Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for speakers of other languages learning English. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
He wrote 5 novels, and she wrote 4 songs. I think you can say:
a. He wrote more novels than she wrote songs.
b. He wrote more novels than she did songs.
Since the verb is repeated, can you omit it?
c. He wrote more novels than she songs.
Is c. grammatical even if it's not as natural? Or is it ungrammatical? If it's ungrammatical, why?
While c) would seem to follow the principles of parallelism, it is not a natural construction. The verb should not be omitted, though it may be replaced with a form of "do".
So c) is not correct. I don't know if "why" is ever a good question when grammar is in question, but I speculate that it is because English doesn't distinguish nouns from verbs by the word endings. So "...than she songs" appears to be a verb "to song" which is an error.
c. He wrote more novels than she songs.
We could consider adding a gapping comma to reduce ambiguity.
We use a gapping comma to show that one or more words have been left out when the missing words would simply repeat the words already used earlier in the same sentence.
c. He wrote more novels than she, songs.
With this comma, songs would be less likely to be interpreted as a verb.
