A question about "as ... as"

[21cn]

Question:
Adult humans generally need "about" seven "or" eight hours "of" sleep while infants need "as twice as" much.

It's said "as twice as" is wrong, should be "twice as". Could you tell why? And I want to know if we should say "as much as twice".

Thanks a lot!

[Erin]

Hello, 21 cn!

I think the easier way to explain this one is this way:

Adult humans generally need "about" seven "or" eight hours "of" sleep while infants need "as twice as" much.

is really a shortened version of this:

Adult humans generally need "about" seven "or" eight hours "of" sleep while infants need "as twice as" much sleep as adult humans need.

If we can see that the first version omits part of the sentence, then we can easily see why it's incorrect to say "as twice as much," since the word "as" appears later on in the sentence.

HTH!! (Hope that helps!!)

Erin

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