[Grammar] The whole procedure takes less than five minutes.

[newkeenlearner]

hi,
I am writing to ask:
Here, in the first sentence 'less' means (less time) and in the second one 'less' means (less money), and both of them are used as pronouns.
Are all correct?
what about the last one?

The whole procedure takes less than five minutes.
On a special offer, this food costs less than its usual price.
To save energy, drive less and walk more. (less often) , more (time)

 

[GoesStation]

Less is an adjective in those sentences.

Use quotation marks, not parentheses ("brackets "in BrE), to mark text you're writing about.

 

[PaulMatthews]

[1] The whole procedure takes less than five minutes.
[2] On a special offer, this food costs less than its usual price.

They’re not pronouns. Less than is a modifier where less is called a 'fused determiner-head' with the than phrase functioning as complement to it.

It works like this: here, less belongs to the part of speech 'determinative' and normally functions as a Determiner in, for example, Ed has less money than Kim does. But in these examples, less represents both the head of the phrase and the determiner; they are combined or 'fused' together into the single word less, hence the term 'fused determiner-head'.


[3] To save energy, drive less and walk more.

Here, less and more are degree adverbs modifying drive and walk respectively.