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This type of complex sentence is known in linguistics as "inversive"; what is meant by the term, is
semantics taken against the syntactic structure. The construction is a helpful stylistic means of literary narration
employed to mark a transition from one chain of related events to another one.
The second group of adverbial clauses includes clauses of manner and comparison. The common semantic
basis of their functions can be defined as "qualification", since they give a qualification to the action or event
rendered by the principal clause. The identification of these clauses can be achieved by applying the traditional
question-transformation test of the how-type, with the corresponding variations of specifying character (for
different kinds of qualification clauses). Cf:.
He spent the Saturday night as was his wont. > How did he spend the Saturday night? You talk to people as
if they were a group. > How do you talk to people? I planned to give my mother a length of silk for a dress, as
thick and heavy as it was possible to buy.
>
How thick and heavy the length of silk was intended to be?
All the adverbial qualification clauses are to be divided into "factual" and "speculative", depending on the
real or unreal propositional event described by them.
The discrimination between manner and comparison clauses is based on the actual comparison which may
or may not be expressed by the considered clausal construction of adverbial qualification. The semantics of
comparison is inherent in the subordinators as if, as though, than, which are specific introducers of comparison
clauses. On the other hand, the subordinator as, both single and in the combinations as ... as, not so ... as, is
unspecific in this sense, and so invites for a discrimination test to be applied in dubious cases. It should be
noted that more often than not a clausally expressed manner in a complex sentence is rendered by an appositive
construction introduced by phrases with the broad-meaning words way and manner. E.g.:
Mr. Smith looked at me in a way that put me on the alert.
Herein lies one of the needed procedures of discrimination, which is to be formulated as the transformation
of the tested clause into an appositive that- or which-clause: the possibility of the transformation marks the
clause of manner, while the impossibility of the transformation (i.e. the preservation of the original as-clause)
marks the clause of comparison. Cf.:
Mary received the guests as nicely as Aunt Emma had taught her >... in a (very) nice way that Aunt Emma
had taught her. (The test marks the clause as that of manner.) Mary received the guests as nicely as Aunt Emma
would have done.
>... in as nice a way as Aunt Emma would have done. (The test marks the clause as
comparative.)
Clauses of comparison are subdivided into those of equality (subordinators as, as ... as, as if, as though) and
those of inequality (subordinators not so ... as, than). The discontinuous introducers mark, respectively, a more
intense rendering of the comparison in question. Cf.:
That summer he took a longer holiday than he had done for many years. For many years he hadn't taken so
long a holiday as he was offered that summer.
With clauses of comparison it is very important to distinguish the contracted expression of predication, i.e.
predicative zeroing, especially for cases where a clause of comparison as such is combined with a clause of
time. Here predicative zeroing may lead to the rise of peculiarly fused constructions which may be wrongly
understood. By way of example, let us take the sentence cited in BA. Ilyish's book: Do you find Bath as
agreeable as when I had the honour of making the enquiry before? (J. Austen)
BA. Ilyish analyses the construction as follows: “The when-clause as such is a temporal clause: it indicates
the time when an action ("his earlier enquiry") took place. However, being introduced by the conjunction as,
which has its correlative, another as, in the main clause, it is at the same time a clause of comparison" [Ilyish,
299].
But time and comparison are absolutely different characteristics, so that neither of them can by definition be
functionally used for the other. They may go together only in cases when time itself forms the basis of
comparison (I came later than Mr. Jerome did). As far as the analysed example is concerned, its clause of time
renders no other clausal meaning than temporal; the clausal comparison proper is expressed reduclionally, its
sole explicit representative being the discontinuous introducer as ... as. Thus, the true semantics of the cited
comparison is to be exposed by paradigmatic de-zeroing: > Do you find Bath as agreeable as it was when I
had the honour of making the enquiry before?
The applied principle of analysis of contamination time-comparison clauses for its part supports the zero-
conception of other outwardly non-predicative comparative constructions, in particular those introduced by
than. Cf.:
Nobody could find the answer quicker than John. > Nobody could find the answer quicker than John did
(could do).