“Now, yer mum an’ dad were as good a witch an’ wizard as I ever
knew.”
(Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone)This comparative construction, I suppose, has the omission of “counterpart of comparative phrase normally omitted (CGEL,p.1108)”. From Wendikidd’s comment, the complement of as before omission would be ‘any of those I ever knew’ or ‘those I ever knew’ (those: good witches and wizards). Are both accepted or one of them?
Answer
W e l l . . . You may certainly, with grammatical propriety, paraphrase this as
as good as
any ∅
any whom
any that
any of those ∅
any of those whom
any of those that
those ∅
those whom
those that
all others ∅
all others whom
all others that I ever knew
But with all respect to Profs. Pullum and Huddleston, that range of choices makes it difficult to say that anything in particular is omitted, except in the Pickwickian sense that they’re all omitted. You can’t “omit” something that was never there to begin with.
It may make Pulludelum’s job easier, and their model more parsimonious, to pretend that something is omitted; but the fact is, they’re importing that something into the sentence.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : Listenever , Answer Author : StoneyB on hiatus
