MORE FREE: When more is used before a one-syllable adjective......

鸭呼嘿 · 发表于 2019-11-22 14:08:53

What will You Say about the Usage Below?

When MORE is used preceeding a one-syllable adjective to make its comparative, it arouses bitter quarrels among native English speakers over the correctness of the use.

When I read(*) of the uses of MORE in the sentence below from the then presidential runner Barack Obama's speech,

"This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign — to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America， "

I said to myself: Oh, so you can say MORE FREE and MORE JUST to put extra emphasis on the positive adjectives，while you commonly say FREER, and you don't usually use a comparative for JUST because it is a non-gradable adjecrive.

* I can read and write English not so bad, ( because I have great helpers: online and print dictionaries, any time when I meet something difficult I go to them and shout out loud: hey guys, come to help! :

鸭呼嘿 · 发表于 2019-11-22 14:10:47

本帖最后由鸭呼嘿于 2019-11-22 20:46 编辑

......come to help! :), but I can not understand while listening :( , because I can not look up the new words instantly, and quite often I can not follow what I hear even there are very few new words within. We call this kind of English as Dumb English in China. It's really a shame! *

And when I read of his another speech A More Perfect Union (and I just found out it was likewise the title for some narratives), I said to myself: Oh, yes. You may use More before a non-gradable adjective to give more stress.

And so I searched the web for more detailed and comprehensive explanation about the usage of MORE before one-syllable and non-gradable adjectives.

鸭呼嘿 · 发表于 2019-11-22 14:11:20

本帖最后由鸭呼嘿于 2019-11-23 07:34 编辑

As expected and in certain uses seen somewhere before, I read of explanations where another usage was given: when a one-syllable adjective goes before a two-syllable one, you may use MORE before the former, such as in “the lecture was more dull and lengthy than the previous one.”

I think the second use is also to lay more emphasis on the adjectives.

I was satisfied about my findings. But to my surprise, when I read along the comments, supposedly by native English speakers, most of them disagreed with the explanations. And Obama's "More Free" was even criticized as "egregiously wrong".

鸭呼嘿 · 发表于 2019-11-22 14:12:08

But I, despite not speaking English as my first language, should venture to say that at least the above uses of MORE FREE, MORE JUST, and MORE PERFECT are absolutely right and, actually, excellent.

What will you say? Do you think all or some of the aforesaid uses are fine or good?

P.S. Comments in any language are welcome!

[The End]

englishpatient · 发表于 2019-11-22 18:37:57

What I wanna say is, with all due respect, that you should go dig up the speeches by both the predecessor and the successor of Obama, and you, I'm totally sure, would get tons and tons MORE confused.

sabrina2111 · 发表于 2019-11-22 21:35:30

Maybe the president add "more" before these non-gradable adjectives in his speech for certain rhetoric effect.

mxh3698 · 发表于 2019-12-8 16:08:53

a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
may I put my two cents here?

in this sentence, adj+er as a way to form comparative adjectives is only applicable to free, while just, equal, caring, and prosperous either have no comparative forms, or call for more+adj as a way to form their comparative forms.
more+adj as a way to form comparative adjectives is used here for rhetorical effect, for in this case, rhetorical effect takes precedence over grammatical correctness.

this reminds me of two sentences, one is Chinese, the other English——

“Curiouser and curiouser!” Cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).”
一个阔人说要读经,嗡的一阵一群狭人也说要读经。

That's just my two cents.

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