question for linguists

[bartholomew]

Are the two sentences correct?

1. She was more interetsed in boys than books.

2. She was more interested in boys than in books.

[kissyfur]

I do a linguistics module as part of my degree and they both seem gramatically correct, may I ask why your asking that?

[Quizmonster]

Both are perfectly correct...apart from the typo in No.1.

[Grunty]

If the word 'books' is replaced by an animate noun, say 'dogs', the meaning of sentence no 2 would be definite. Sentence no 1 could be ambiguous; it could mean that she was less interested in dogs but it could also mean that she had more interest in boys than dogs did.

[jno]

Grunty is correct, but the sense of 1 is clear enough, so it is good idiomatic English. It might be more ambiguous if it read 'She liked Bill more than Ted' - that is, it could mean 'She liked Bill more than she liked Ted' or 'She liked Bill more than Ted liked Bill' - and in this case it might be clearer to spell it out as in your example 2 (or as I just have).