"Our rivals who paid a lot for their training performed worse than we, a bunch of amateurs united by common goals, did"
Is the did obligatory in this sentence, or does it work without it?
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4It's a terrible sentence. I'd advise rewriting from the start.– Hot LicksNov 2, 2015 at 23:00
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"Our rivals performed worse than we did. And they paid a lot for their training, while we are just a bunch of amateurs united by common aims."– Edwin AshworthNov 3, 2015 at 0:04
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Use the parenthetical phrase as a right dislocation: Our rivals who paid a lot for their training performed worse than we did, a bunch of amateurs united by common goals.– Araucaria - Not here any more.Nov 13, 2015 at 12:29
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2 Answers
Leaving the "did" in the sentence is necessary if you don't change anything else, but it only just scrapes in as grammatical. If you don't include the "did" at the end, then you need to change the "we" to "us". It also needs commas after "rivals" and "training".
It's an unwieldy sentence, as others have said, but it's not so bad if only used in spoken language. It's seeing it written down like that which is scary :-)
I think strictly the sentence is grammatical either with or without the final "did". But either way it's fairly clunky.
I'd be tempted to invert the whole thing:
"We, a bunch of amateurs united by common goals, performed better than our rivals, who had paid a lot for their training."
