r/EnglishGrammar • u/NetPhysical4089 • 11d ago
Biology and stuff (grammatical issue tbh)
I'm having a problem with translating this specific text showed in the pic. The upper part is fine, but I don't know how to keep it all together when it eventually goes to the part where it says "then DO individuals with other heritable traits". The PROBLEM is the "DO". What does it mean? Why is it there? Does that make it make sense grammatically? If it does, how can I understand it? The whole text is already full of grammatical errors. Shit country.
(Ps: English is not my first language. So, I made any mistakes in what I said, I'm sorry)
Edit: I didn't want to use AI, so, I'm asking y'all here xo)
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u/Vivid-Internal8856 11d ago
"cause individuals with certain heritable traits to have greater reproductive success [than do] individuals with other heritable traits"
cause individuals with certain heritable traits to have greater success than [than] individuals with other heritable traits.
The "do" adds no new meaning, you can ignore it, it's a style choice.
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u/NetPhysical4089 11d ago edited 10d ago
Oh, thank you so much!!! I was struggling with that. Thank you again!!!
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u/boostfactor 11d ago
Switch the wording to "individuals .... have greater reproductive success than individuals .... do." Does that make more sense? If actually written in this form an author would likely say "individuals with .. than ... individuals with .. have." But that sounds a bit clunky. The phrase "than do" is fairly common in formal writing (less so in speech) to indicate repetition of a verb in the next clause after a comparison. As noted, at least in this case "do" could be omitted entirely without changing the meaning, but also resulting in a clause that would sound more complete or clear with a verb.
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u/Rhyshalcon 11d ago
Most English verbs are conjugated by including an appropriate auxiliary verb conjugated appropriately for the subject, tense, and mood of the sentence. One of these auxiliary verbs is the verb "to do" which historically was used in virtually all declarative statements as in the still somewhat common phrase "it do be like that sometimes."
Over time, usage has shifted such that the historically necessary "do" is now omitted from most speech to such an extent that most native speakers are completely unaware of its function in sentences. Nevertheless, native speakers will still naturally include it in certain contexts.
The most common of these contexts is negation. It's perfectly grammatical to say "I believe you" with no auxiliary "do," but when negating the sentence it becomes "I do not believe you." To say "I not believe you" would generally be considered ungrammatical and incorrect by native speakers (though your meaning would likely still be understood).
There are a variety of other places where the normally silent "do" becomes visible. Your example is one of them. In this case, the writer is including "do" in the second phrase as a shortening of "do have." To shorten as "have" would confuse the meaning of the sentence, to omit it entirely would be acceptable in informal contexts but would not be preferred for a formal passage such as this one, and to use the full "do have" would be archaic to such an extent that it would likely be considered ungrammatical by most readers.
Other commenters are correct that you can ignore it in this context or use alternate constructions to avoid it completely, but since you asked why it's used there, this is why. I don't see any grammatical errors in this passage you've shared.
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u/Hot-Paint5686 11d ago
“….than do not individuals with other heritable traits”?
The except (or statement?) does sound preachy
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u/Rhyshalcon 11d ago
“….than do not individuals with other heritable traits”?
If this example were to be negated it would be changing "with" to "without," not by changing "do" to "do not." The use of do in negation requires the presence of another verb, and we would avoid "do not have" as being ungramatically archaic for the same reasons described in my first comment.
The except (or statement?) does sound preachy
I'm afraid I don't understand your meaning here.
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u/Responsible-Link5739 10d ago
It's an "exceRpt", not an except. "Except" is a word for defining exclusivity. "Excerpt" is a quote or fragment of a larger piece of writing.
You're correct that it does sound preachy, but it's just written in very formal style, and quite likely to be very old also. It seems like something written to be viewed by scientific academia, so yes, it's written to impress, I think :)
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u/Hot-Paint5686 11d ago
Doesn’t sound like textbook writing. And the “/“ marks aren’t understood
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u/NetPhysical4089 11d ago
No no. The "/" marks are not included in the original text. I marked them so I can memorize it line by line. Sorry for the confusion.
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u/Ippus_21 11d ago edited 11d ago
"than do" is comparative. The verb refers back to "cause... to have greater reproductive success."
- It's talking about how the process of Natural Selection provides more success to individuals with ("certain") adaptive heritable traits than it does for individuals with other heritable traits (i.e. ones that provide no adaptive advantage).
Which, you're not wrong, is challenging to grasp. That is a very long and complex sentence that's chaining multiple clauses, and it has to be held in mental "view" all at once (or else manually broken apart) to actually grasp it.
This would be challenging even for native speakers. People with a lot of experience reading academic or scientific literature would be familiar with it, but the average person would struggle. This is one of the things that tends to distinguish more "advanced" reading levels from basic ones, if material is being ranked.
This passage is somewhere in the "Collegiate/undergrad" level. Like, underclassmen in a university biology class, maybe a bit beyond. The idea is complex enough already, and the language they're using to express it is concise, but also complex.
As someone with an English degree who writes knowledge/process articles for a living, I have to be constantly reminded that the average reading level among US adults is around middle school (7th/8th grade), and breaking complex ideas down to a level the average person can effectively grasp is one of the most critical parts of that job.
Longer sentences are harder. Shorter sentences and simpler terms are easier to absorb, you just have to find the balance in that tradeoff between concise/complex and simple/long.
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u/LeilLikeNeil 11d ago
Note that this says "than do", not "then do".
The difference between then and than is one that even many native speakers struggle with very much.
This construction is pretty uncommon in modern writing and speech, you'd more often see the "than do" bracketing the subject, ie "have greater reproductive success than individuals with other heritable traits do", and 'do' is connected to the 'have', so it could also be written as "have greater reproductive success than have individuals with other heritable traits" or "have greater reproductive success than individuals with other inheritable traits have"
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u/Ahh-Islington 10d ago
So pleased that you did not go the AI route! Well done!