Learn English – Are “No more healthy than” and “No more big than” both OK

adjectivescomparativescomparisonsgrammaticalitynegation

I am Japanese and a teacher of English. Now I am at a loss at a topic on "Comparison."

This sentence should be considered grammatically OK:

Oversleeping is no more healthy than overeating.

Whereas this sentence seems to be deemed wrong (including by AI-based grammar checkers):

This camera is no more big than my hands.

However, it does not make sense to me as these sentences should be identical in terms of their syntax and grammar.

Are both sentences correct?

Best Answer

Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik have the following in their A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (pp. 462-463):

Most adjectives that are inflected for their comparison can also take the periphrastic forms with more and most. With more, they seem to do so more easily when they are predicative and are followed by a than-clause:

  • John is more mad than Bob is.
  • It would be difficult to find a man more brave than he is.
  • He is more wealthy than I thought.

Periphrastic forms are, however, uncommon with a number of monosyllabic adjectives (including those listed in 7.75 as forming their comparison irregularly [good, bad, far]):

bad, big, black, clean, fair [colour], far, fast, good, great, hard, high, low, old, quick, small, thick, thin, tight, wide, young

They add the following note:

There seem to be fewer restrictions on using the periphrastic forms with adjectives in the comparative construction formed with the correlative the...the:

  • The more old/older we are, the more wise/wiser we become.

BUT NOT: *a more old man

Good and bad, however, require nonperiphrastic forms (better, worse) even here.

The example you give fits the context in which fewer restrictions seem to apply to the use of the periphrastic form only partially. Big is used predicatively and followed by than, though not by a than-clause. Perhaps the addition of are could make it more acceptable:

  • This camera is no more big than my hands are.
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