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This question is raised on the basis of a bad parsing of an otherwise unproblematic sentence, it seems.


From a New York Times article:

“We don’t live in a utopia,” he said in a 2002 interview with the Japanese magazine Flash. “Something was bound to happen.”

The paragraph ends and the next comes up with

More soon did.

The meaning is clear enough, and on the same ground the omission of the subject (presumably, "it") is motivated. What enables this instance of ellipsis seems to be the displacement of "more soon". But why is it "more soon" instead of "sooner" here, and will this omission still be legit if it is replaced by "sooner"?

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    More doesn't modify soon, it means "More events soon happened." Dec 18, 2022 at 13:49
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    More cannot possibly take place until something has, And in your quote, something still lies in the future. Doesn't figure. Dec 18, 2022 at 14:10

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As a reference back to the previous statement "something was bound to happen", it means "more things soon did happen".

You asked why not use 'sooner' - well, that is a comparative term. We might say that something happened sooner than something else. That isn't what is happening here. Somebody made a prediction that 'something' would happen, and soon after that prediction was made, something did happen.

It does feel a little bit jarring because "something" would be one thing, whereas "more" sounds like many things. On the basis of the quotation, I would have followed it up with "it soon did".

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