Chipping away at -er comparatives?

[W Brewer]

AW:  <<And isn't the tendency for shorter (1-syllable) adjs to take the
suffixes, but the longer ones to take ... more/most?>>
WB:  Taiwanese EFL interlanguage typically combine the synthetic &
analytic:  <more crazier>. Hawai'ian pidgin, too:  <Hey, bra'! Do it da
kine mo' betta!>
AW: <<Two-syllable adjs like "crazy" are at the borderline . . .>>
WB: What about <humble>: <<No {humbler / *more humble} pope could be found
than Francis.>> where <humble> is disyllabic in the analytic construction,
but monosyllabic in the synthetic. <<He is certainly {*humbler / more
humble}than your average pope.>> Maybe something about attributive vs.
predicate adjective position.
Mustn't think too much about these things. Bad for the intuition.

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