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Yes, this is a question that people keep repeating about comparatives, especially with these adjectives: easy, pretty, friendly, lively.

I know the rule about two-syllable adjectives ending in /i/ or /o/ should get the morphological -er and -est.

Yet, it is evident from different copora that the use of "more easy" and "more friendly" exists, which is not infrequent.

Did anyone come up with an explanation for this or did read any scholarly articles relating to the choice of these different construction of comparatives?

Vincent Tse
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    I have not encountered "more easy" in any written works or orally from any native speakers. To make sure this experience is not localized to me or my region, I just did an nGrams search of the expansive Google Books corpus. It supports the conclusion that in contemporary language; more easy is virtually unknown (compared with easier and more easily**). – Dan Bron Oct 06 '15 at 11:55
  • A quick search of the COCA corpus sustained the conclusion: easier freq 26,000, more easily freq 2400, more easy freq 93. – Dan Bron Oct 06 '15 at 11:56
  • Furthermore, I just checked the 93 hits in the COCA corpus and the majority of them are false positives along the lines of for more easy tips (i.e. unrelated to the sense of "easier"). The only legitimate use I see (that is, instances where "more easy" is used where "easier" could have been used), though it is rare, is in creating a parallelism for the sake of euphony and meter: more easy and more fun. – Dan Bron Oct 06 '15 at 12:04
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    how about "friendlier" and "more friendly"? In Coca, there are quite many instances that "friendlier" could be used. – Vincent Tse Oct 06 '15 at 12:12
  • @VincentTse The less frequently a lexeme is used, the more regular it is. Contrariwise, the more frequent it is, the less regular it tends to be. And irregular forms are not very flexible. The comparative "easier" is much more common than "friendlier", so the former is much more irregular and fixed, and the latter is much more flexible and lenient in application. You can actually see this popularity-leading-to-irregularity in action, right now, by comparing the nGrams of friendlier and more friendly. Fifty years hence, you probably won't be able to say "more friendly". – Dan Bron Oct 06 '15 at 12:18
  • @DanBron Do you think there is any implication from these flexible and lenient application? For example in a ESL setting. – Vincent Tse Oct 06 '15 at 12:23
  • ESL students will of course prefer the regularized forms. Rules are easier to internalize and remember than the endless litany of irregularities and exceptions of real, natural language. That's the primary difference between 1L and 2L from a language acquisition perspective: one does not apply rules inappropriately in one's 1L because one never learned the rules, nor does a native speaker think in terms of rules. If you spend a lot of time with ESLs, that may explain your impression that "more easy" is "not infrequent": that's an ESL applying a learned, rote rule too broadly. – Dan Bron Oct 06 '15 at 12:28
  • @DanBron Of course, if one's surname happens to be Shakespeare one can employ a more wider range of comparatives than the likes of you and me. – WS2 Oct 06 '15 at 12:35
  • @WS2 Yes, sadly, lacking such a pedigree, my application for a poetic license was declined :/ – Dan Bron Oct 06 '15 at 12:36

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