Looking for an accepted grammatical explanation.

Paco2004 wrote:

"The farther you move away from Earth's center, the less the pull of gravity becomes" This "the" was originally "thy", i.e., the instrumental case of the nominative definite article "the" and was used to mean "by means of". Now this "the" is lexically classed as an adverb and OED's grammarians take it that the first "the" means "by how much" and the second "the" means "by so much"        "By how much farther you move away from Earth's center, by so much less the pull of gravity becomes." The oldest use of this construct appeared in King Alfred's translation of Gregory's Regula Pastorialis scripted in 897: "Ðæt her ðy mara wisdom on londe wære, ðy we ma geðeoda cuðon" On the other hand, a British grammarian Quirk explains "the … the …" in his CGEL as paring subordinators to make up a proportional relative clause similar to "as … so …".        "As you move away from Earth's center farther, so the pull of gravity become less." Suppose the paired "the"s could be used independently, and suppose        The pull of gravity becomes less the farther you move away from Earth's center. be grammatical, then it would be paraphrased like:        "As you move away from Earth's center farther, the pull of gravity become less." It makes sense, but sounds somewhat weaker in the sense of proportionality than "the ... the …" or "as … so …" paco

I am somewhat satisfied with this explanation. It at least tries to explain the usage of "the" in 'the farther'.

Peano wrote:

A. I don't see the term "correlative conjunction" in your initial post. B. The pull of gravity becomes less the farther you move away from Earth’s center. When you changed the word order and supplied the tacit the before less, you put the sentence in a form that makes the correlative conjunctions clear. Though the word order of your original sentence is a bit awkward, it is grammatically correct and grammatically equivalent to your revised sentence; the only difference is that one of the correlative conjunctions in the original is implied but not stated. That's why I referred you to that post. The author talks about parts of clauses and correlative conjunctions that are omitted but understood.

Your reference used the term and that is why I used it in a quote. I used the term of 'contrasted comparatives' or 'combined comparatives". So don't quibble on a minor detail.

Anyway, your answer did not shed light on my question

Peano wrote:

In your original post, you said: "it is not clear to me what other role 'the farther' plays besides its role as an adverb." I replied: Farther and less are simply adverbs. And you then said: "I want to know if the usage of 'the farther' in this sentence is a well-known grammatical construction." And I replied: "The two clauses are linked by the … the …, which function as correlative conjunctions comparable to such pairs as either/or, neither/nor, etc." Correlative conjunctions are a well-known grammatical construction. In a subsequent posting, I explained that one of the correlatives is omitted but understood in the original sentence. All the grammatical functions having been accounted for, I am puzzled. Exactly what part of your question remains unanswered?

Perhaps, you are puzzled because you don't know what you are saying.

Peano wrote:

>Perhaps, you are puzzled because you don't know what you are saying. No, I'm puzzled because, at this point, I don't know what question you still want answered, and still more puzzled that you don't state your question. Why the game-playing?

 paco2004 knew exactly what my question was.

Why don't you go back and read my original question again? I stated that I already knew that 'the farther' was used as an adverb and implied that the sentence in question was not in the same form as the contrasted comparatives. You wasted your time and mine stating what I already knew.

Gentle hint:

Questioners are asked to respond civilly to those who offer help in all good faith.

MrP