There is a widespread belief in the US and Western

[Tadashi]

Hi Ron,
I have a question about the OA.
OA: Young people have less of a commitment to work and a career than their parents and grandparents had.

I just can't fully understand what the author wants to convey.

Does the author of the sentence tell us that young people have less of a commitment to work and [to] a career than their parents and grandparents had?

eg. a beautiful garden with flowers and [with] grass
eg. a cruel criminal beyond imagination and [beyond] description

right?

would you please elaborate the use of the structure: "have less of blabla."?
I am not familiar with it.
ARIGATO,
Tadashi.

[RonPurewal]

Does the author of the sentence tell us that young people have less of a commitment to work and [to] a career than their parents and grandparents had?

Just think of "work and a career" as a single item. Like "Trinidad and Tobago" is a single country.

The second "to" is not there because, if it were there, it would imply that "work" and "a career" are two separate things to which someone might commit. That doesn't make sense.
(This is a stylistic issue; it won't be tested. As far as this exam is concerned, "to X and Y" and "to X and to Y" are equivalent.)

I just can't fully understand what the author wants to convey.

I can't think of any other way to interpret the sentence. Is there a competing interpretation in your head?

[RonPurewal]

would you please elaborate the use of the structure: "have less of blabla."?
I am not familiar with it.
ARIGATO,
Tadashi.

"- Google the words "have less of a" (or "has less of a")"”including the quotes

"- Read through lots of the examples

- Note how the phrase is used.

This sort of exploration will give you a much better sense of the use of this phrase than I could in a single forum post.

[Tadashi]

Oh thanks for your advice.
Having googled "have less of", I found several sentences written by some one from NY Times.

for example,Yglesias asks, if the middle class is under pressure, what exactly is it that ordinary American families have less of (or rather, had less of before the Great Recession struck).

my question no.1:
"have less of" can add both countable nouns and uncountable nouns, am I right?

my question no.2:
I don't know the differences between "I have less time now" & "I have less of time now". Can I say "I have less of time now"?

my question no.3:
I googled "have more of blabla.." but I could not find useful quotes.
Do you agree with me that we can not use the phrase "have more of blabla"?

If we can't, what kind of phrase can be used to convey the opposing idea of "have less of"

Thanks for your time in advance.
Tadashi.

[RonPurewal]

You're missing the "a" from my recommendation (google "have less of a").

The "a" matters. Without it, you're casting a much wider net, including the examples you found above (= not the same type of thing).

[RonPurewal]

my question no.1:
"have less of" can add both countable nouns and uncountable nouns, am I right?

If you're actually talking about a lower number (integer) of a countable thing"”e.g., 15 books rather than 20 books"”then "less" is wrong. You need "fewer".

Otherwise, as usual, it's context-dependent.
E.g., let's say I'm looking at a list of 10 foods.

I eat less of these foods than I did ten years ago.
"”> I eat these foods in smaller servings. This doesn't mean that I eat fewer of them (= that I've cut any of them out of my diet).

I eat fewer of these foods than I did ten years ago.
"”> Ten years ago, I ate N of these foods, where 0 < N ≤ 10.
Now I eat M of them, where M < N.
This statement implies nothing about serving size.

[RonPurewal]

my question no.2:
I don't know the differences between "I have less time now" & "I have less of time now". Can I say "I have less of time now"?

No, you'd say "less time".

This is one of those things GMAC will never test, because it's subject to lots of seemingly random variation"”but understood subconsciously by native speakers. E.g., all of the following are correct:
less food (not "less of food")
less nutritious food (not "less of nutritious food")
less of my aunt's food (not "less my aunt's food")
less of Mr. Smith's food (not "less Mr. Smith's food")
less McDonald's food (not "less of McDonald's food")"”if McDonald's is the restaurant
less of McDonald's food (not "less McDonald's food")"”if McDonald is the name of someone who gives me food. In this case, it's just like "Mr. Smith's food".
less of this food (not "less this food")

As you can see, there's a lot of subtlety here. This is one of those things (like "a"/"an"/"the") that will most likely never be completely understood by second-language speakers of English. So GMAC won't test it.

[RonPurewal]

my question no.3:
I googled "have more of blabla.." but I could not find useful quotes.

You can have more of my aunt's food, more of Smith's food, more of this food, etc. Sure.

In fact, there are far more examples of "more of" than of "less of", because "more of" is also the opposite of "fewer of".

fewer of these books <"”> more of these books
fewer of Smith's books <"”> more of Smith's books
etc.

--

I just put "have more of" (including the quotes) into google and found literally millions of useful results. Did you do something different?

[Tadashi]

Ohhhh, thanks for offering me sooo much knowledge!
That's very very kind of you, Ron!
I googled "have less of a " this time and found the following examples:
1.Commodities will have less of a China influence.
2.Will a person that is well hydrated have less of an appetite?

so "less of a + countable noun" = fewer+countable nouns.

am i right?

ARIGATO
Tadashi

& Wish you have a nice weekend!

[RonPurewal]

As used in those examples, "influence" and "appetite" are NOT countable.

"Influence" can be countable"”if you're using it to mean something different. E.g., The two main influences on Robin's music are Romantic concertos and Southern gospel music.
(Here, "influence" = "a thing that helped to shape...")

If "influence" = "powerful effect", as in your sentence, then it's not countable.

I doubt you'd ever see "appetite" used as a countable noun outside of academia. (Psychologists might speak of one's sexual appetite and one's appetite for food as "two appetites".)
In normal writing, you'll see it used in the same way as "zeal" or "enthusiasm", which are similarly non-countable.

[RonPurewal]

You'll seldom ever see "less of a" with a countable noun. If you see this, it's figurative language, referring to the idea that someone's/something's worth, significance, or status is diminished in other people's estimation.

E.g.,
Many people will view you as less of a man if you don't like sports.
"”> You can probably understand what this sentence means. (Clearly, it has nothing to do with being physically smaller.)

[RonPurewal]

MOST IMPORTANTLY
Just accumulate examples in your mind, and let the aggregate of those examples serve as a standard by which you can judge future examples.

"Definitions" are at best awkward, and at worst impossible to form coherently. (E.g., you probably have a very well-developed sense of what it means for a person to be "rude" to another person. Yet if I asked you for an all-encompassing definition of "rude", I very much doubt you'd be able to provide one.)
You'll notice that, when definitions do exist, they're generally used for very simple ideas.

If you have a mental repository of sentences that work correctly, you can make analogies to them"”a process that's much faster AND much more accurate than trying to remember and use "rules" and "definitions".

[Tadashi]

Very helpful.


If you have a mental repository of sentences that work correctly, you can make analogies to them"”a process that's much faster AND much more accurate than trying to remember and use "rules" and "definitions".

can't agree more.

Thanks.
Tadashi.

[RonPurewal]

This is really just a very general human truth"”"Experience is valuable""”applied specifically to the craft of creating/editing sentences.

That our brains are exceptionally good at analogies"”and exceptionally bad at rules"”is, in fact, the sole reason why experience is such a valuable commodity to human beings.
If we thought in terms of algorithms, then experience would have no value whatsoever.

[sdfsdfsdfs481]

Hi

I got questions about ambiguity. What if I didn't find the ambiguity when solving the problem? One meaning you mentioned

young people are less committed to work/career than TO their parents/grandparents

is so hard to be find out. Is it finding ambiguity a required skill in SC problems? In comparison, placement of modifier and parallelism questions there are so many ambiguity in wrong answers. How to train myself be aware of ambiguity in a sentence?

There is a widespread belief in the US and Western Europe that young people have a smaller commitment to work and a career than their parents and grandparents and that the source of the change lies in the collapse of the 'work ethic'.

A. a smaller commitment to work and a career than their parents and grandparents

B. less of a commitment to work and a career than their parents and grandparents

C. a smaller commitment to work and a career than their parents and grandparents

D. less of a commitment to work and a career than their parents and grandparents had

E. a lessening of the commitment to work and a career than their parents and grandparents had


In D - the shouldn't the verb be DID ??

'had' actually creates better parallelism, as it's parallel to 'have' in the first part.

Also ... can we omit the second verb here... as there is NO ambiguity. like in choice B ??

no.
there is ambiguity if you eliminate the helping verb.
without the helping verb, there are two interpretations:
1: young people are less committed to work/career than WERE their parents/grandparents (the intended meaning)
2: young people are less committed to work/career than TO their parents/grandparents
you can't tell which of these is the correct meaning without the helping verb; therefore, the helping verb is necessary.