2011GRE考试阅读辅导：长难句实例分析42
Apparently most massive stars manage to lose sufficient material that their masses drop below the critical value of 1.4 M before they exhaust their nuclear fuel. (5)显然，大多数的巨星能够失去足够多的物质以至于在燃尽其核燃料以前他们的质量下降到关键值1.4M以下。难在：sufficient …that… = so much (many ) … that…
难句类型：特殊省略、固定搭配
解释：我们中国考生显然没有见过sufficient…that…这样的结构，因此习惯性的把that以及其后的内容看成了一个定语从句来修饰material，但是这样读下来发现意思不通，于是发生思维混乱，大脑拒绝工作，以至当场晕厥。
实际上原文相当于在sufficient之前省略了such,与后面的that构成了一个such…that…的结构，但是这种省略不是可以随便使用的：本句之所以能够这样表述，是因为sufficient本身就是一个enough to meet the need of a situation的意思;而enough的意思是occurring in such quantity as to fully meet demands, needs, or expectations.所以，把这两个词义串在一起，sufficient material that…的词义就变成了material occurring in such large quantity that the need of …be fully met。所以我们除了可以把原句看成是省略了such以外，还可以把sufficient …that…看成了一个固定的搭配，相当于so much …that…的意思。
意群训练：Apparently most massive stars manage to lose sufficient material that their masses drop below the critical value of 1.4 M before they exhaust their nuclear fuel.
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