basketball

[Victor Steinbok]

I can almost understand what the ESPN announcer was trying to say:

"Nobody makes more bigger shots than Chauncy Billups."

"More" and "bigger" are meant to be parallel, but it doesn't quite work.
One reading would be [more [bigger shots]], but this begs for antecedent
for "bigger"--bigger than what? Another reading is "more [and] bigger
shots", but this is also odd. One thing that was /not/ implied was the
nonstandard [[more bigger] shots]. The actual implication might have
been something like, "No one makes more big shots /or/ bigger shots than
Chauncy Billups." In other words, he makes a lot of very important
shots. But the hyperbolic got lost somewhere in the comparative.

     VS-)

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org