Using Definite Articles before Comparative Adjectives
2023-02-03
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1After the winter holidays, some of us may feel the need to exercise and get healthy. We may have been eating richer foods than usual at meals shared with friends and families. During the winter months, gyms and sellers of exercise equipment often have an increase in business. 2One of our readers asked about expressions like, "the more you eat, the bigger your stomach gets." This expression is a good example of a time when we use the definite article, "the," with comparative adjectives. In this case, the comparative adjectives are "bigger" and "more." Today's lesson will center on this kind of structure. 3Let us review first how we usually use comparatives. They are adjectives -- words that give more information about, or describe, a noun. Here is an example: 4Marco's New Year's party this year was bigger than last year. 5In this sentence, "bigger" is an adjective describing the noun "party." 6Relationships 7The main thing to understand about using comparatives is that you are talking about the relationship of one thing to other things. When we have two expressions using "the" + "comparative" we are showing a relationship where one thing changes in relation to the other. 8Let us look at another example. Our friend Marco says he spent too much money on his huge party. He says that is because: 9The bigger the party, the more food and drinks you must buy. 10As you may remember, basic English sentences have a subject followed by a verb and sometimes an object. The subject and object are nouns. Generally, a verb comes before the object. For example: 11You must buy more food and drinks. 12Something interesting happens to the usual word order in these sentences, however. 13In our example, we heard the verb phrase after the object: 14...the more food and drinks you must buy. 15And we can sometimes leave out the verb with one of the subject nouns. Our earlier sentence could also be said this way: 16The bigger the party is, the more food and drinks you must buy. 17Homework 18Now you can try making your own sentences with comparatives. Here are parts that you can combine to make the sentence type we have talked about. Remember you can choose to include one of the verbs if you like. 191. You get closer to the book. 20and 21The text becomes clearer. 22Write down your sentence. And here are two more parts: 232. The sun rises higher. 24and 25You feel warmer. 26Got it? Now, listen to the sentences and check yours: 27Sentence 1: The closer you get to the book, the clearer the text. 28and 29Sentence 2: The higher the sun, the warmer you feel. 30I'm sure you did a good job! And that's Everyday Grammar! 31I'm Jill Robbins. And I'm Dan Novak. 32Jill Robbins wrote this lesson for Learning English. 33______________________________________________________________ 34What do you think of this story? We want to hear from you. We have a new comment system. Here is how it works: 35Each time you return to comment on the Learning English site, you can use your account and see your comments and replies to them.