Adverb clauses bring variety of information to sentences – time, place, manner, condition, concession, purpose, and more. Information on proportion, provided by adverb clause of proportion, is the topic of this post.
Learn more: This post covers just one adverb clause. Learn other types of adverb clause.
What is adverb clause of proportion?
Adverb clauses of proportion express proportionality between two situations. It tells how one situation changes with change in another. They’re mainly introduced by subordinating conjunction as with or without correlative so (in formal use) or by correlative the…the, with each the followed by a comparative form. Examples:
Note: (so) means so is optional. So can be dropped in informal use.
As the storm intensified, (so) the waves grew larger. [Size of the wave grew in proportion to the intensity of the storm.]
As he entered deeper into politics, (so) his disenchantment grew. [His disenchantment grew in proportion to the depth of his entry into politics.]
As the assignment deadline approached, (so) my stress level rose.
The less you worry, the happier you’ll be.
The closer we reach our goal, the harder it gets to keep going.
The more diverse the team became, the more innovative the solutions it proposed.
If you’re wondering why the first of the two parts introduced by the…the is a dependent clause when the other part looks exactly the same, refer the next section.
We saw examples of adverb clauses conveying meaning of proportion, but some of them may convey more than one meaning, including proportion, simultaneously. Next up is such mix of meanings.
Mixed signals: An adverb clause may convey multiple meanings simultaneously
Adverb clauses of proportion introduced by the…the often convey contingency meaning as well: They can be paraphrased into a when– or if-clause showing contingency. Let’s take few earlier examples to understand this.
The less you worry, the happier you’ll be. [Contingency meaning: When you worry less, you’ll be happier.]
The closer we reach our goal, the harder it gets to keep going. [When we reach closer to our goal, it gets harder to keep going.]
The more diverse the team became, the more innovative the solutions it proposed. [When the team became more diverse, it proposed more innovative solution.]
Since the first clause is dependent in the above paraphrases (see square brackets), the first clause is dependent in the original (the…the) as well. In fact, adverb clauses of proportion introduced by the…the always takes first position.
Though the above clauses may be called adverb clause of contingency or adverb clause of proportion, grammatically they’re both clauses rolled into one.
Learn more: Adverb clauses of proportion are sometimes confused with comparative clauses, after all both compare and both use correlatives to compare.
