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1. She spends less of her time playing tennis now. - correct example

2. She had less of reason to complain than I. - incorrect example (I know we can make "reason" countable and write "less of a reason")

In both 1. and 2. we have the uncountable nouns "time" and "reason" after "less of". Why, then, is 1. correct but 2. incorrect?

3. people of lesser importance. - correct example

4. She had lesser reason to complain than I. - incorrect example (I know we can make "reason" countable and write "a lesser reason")

In both 3. and 4. we have the uncountable nouns "importance" and "reason" after "lesser". Why, then, is 3. correct but 4. incorrect?

Thanks!

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Loviii
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  • In 1/2, less is pronominal in function; the meaning is ‘a smaller amount/portion (of)’, so it makes some sense that it would work with something like time, which can be semantically subdivided into smaller units, but not with reason, which can’t (what would a smaller amount of reason be?). Why 4 doesn’t work is a better question. “She had better reason to complain than I” seems slightly better, but not felicitous either. My immediate guess would be that than constructions prefer quantifiers to adjectives where semantically and grammatically possible. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Oct 05 '19 at 10:09
  • Less reason to complain seems OK to me (but not less of reason). – Kate Bunting Oct 05 '19 at 11:19
  • Janus Bahs Jacquet, As far as I'm concerned, "less of" can also mean a degree: "It is less of a problem than I'd expected." Therefore 2. could have had this meaning. – Loviii Oct 05 '19 at 11:44

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