Action of comparatives on connected clauses

Consider the sentence

Though somewhat less (i) _____than previous chapters and suffering from a minor rash of academic jargon, the final chapter of the book is nonetheless (ii) ______laypeople.

How would I know on which parts is the word "less" acting on?

For example, I can parse the first part of the sentence as asserting "The previous chapter is less _____ (arcane) and suffering less from jargon." or I can parse it as "The previous chapter is less _____ (coherent) and suffering from jargon." The second interpretation is the one that's considered correct.

So if I take it as a rule that given a sentence of the from "A is less B and C", it implies "A is less B" and "A is C", wouldn't such a rule contradict with the canonical interpretation of the sentence "Pizza is less healthy and tasty." which implies "Pizza is less tasty."?

More precisely, why am I not allowed to interpret "less arcane and suffering" as "less arcane and less suffering" when I can interpret "less healthy and tasty" as "less healthy and less tasty"?

Solution 1:

Why am I not allowed to interpret "less arcane and suffering" as "less arcane and less suffering" when I can interpret "less healthy and tasty" as "less healthy and less tasty"?

This seems to be the crux of the actual question.The answer is simple: you can.

However, suffering is a noun, not an adjective, and that makes the phrase so unidiomatic as to be unacceptable without a slight change.

The following are wrong:

✘ Less healthy and taste.
✘ Less health and tasty.

The following are fine:

✔ Less health and taste.
✔ Less healthy and tasty.

It's not a matter of grammar, strictly speaking, but of parallelism (style) and how, in this case, mixing a noun with an adjective makes the construction so awkward as to be considered wrong.

The problem is not with the expansion of less—which does work with each word individually—but with the category of each word used in the pair.

Arcana is the noun form of the adjective arcane:.

This is wrong:

✘ Less arcane and suffering.
✘ Less arcana and sufferable.

This is fine:

✔ Less arcane and sufferable.

But aracana, being countable, is normally paired with fewer, not less, so the phrase can't be reduced when less is used:

？ Less arcana and suffering.
✔ Fewer arcana and less suffering.