Straighter forward
The student's homework said, in an assignment about the derivational
suffix
-ize in English, that
for some adjective bases the meaning of the derivative is "
straighter forward", while other
cases are more complex. Naturally, my interest was piqued by the
comparative, so I asked her about it.
She reported that she had originally typed "more straightforward", but
that the grammar checker in the version of Microsoft Word she was using
suggested that that was incorrect and that "straighter forward" was
what she wanted. "Straighter forward" looked just wrong to her,
but who was she, a mere undergraduate, to argue with the linguists at
Microsoft?
My own version of Word doesn't object to "more straightforward", "more
straight-forward", or "more straight forward". It's cool with
"more straight" rather than "straighter". There are a lot of
mysteries in the world of grammar checking.
[Added 3/12: Several correspondents have now reported grammar checkers that suggest "straighter forward" for "more straight forward" but not the other variants, so if my student typed "straight forward" -- which the
OED recognizes as a variant, though it's clearly a rarely used one nowadays -- that might have triggered "straighter" as a suggested correction.]
Now, the comparative of a three-syllable adjective like
straightforward (also spelled
straight-forward and
straight forward) would
unproblematically be the periphrastic "more straightforward".
This is so, um, straightforward that dictionaries normally don't list
such comparatives; it would just be a waste of space to include them.
If you press things hard, you could imagine an inflectional comparative
"straightforwarder" (with spelling variants), and there are a few
relevant webhits for this version:
The straight forwarder way to format a
cell is to use an already defined-style in the spreadsheet. (
link)
(Many of these hits seem to be from Middle Eastern and South Asian
sites.) This version is at least consistent with the etymology of
straightforward, which had
straight as a modifier of
forward, but phonologically it's
about as awkward as "beautifuler" 'more beautiful'.
Nevertheless, there are also a few relevant webhits for "straighter
forward" as the comparative:
its a 2wd truck so i was hoping the
swap would be straighterforward than into a 4wd model. (
link)
Here it looks like
straight
has been interpreted as the head of
straightforward,
with
forward as a
postmodifier. Or maybe the
straight
element was picked to take the inflectional comparative suffix
-er because it's more of an
adjective than
forward.
Who knows?
So the non-standard inflected comparatives do occur, but in very small
numbers. You wouldn't want your grammar checker to take them
seriously as models.
Maybe some grammar checkers are dubious about periphrastic comparatives
with monosyllabic adjectives. Mine apparently isn't. And
querying any sequence of "more" plus a monosyllable that could be
an adjective could get you into a fair amount of trouble. You
wouldn't want
More straight men are opera fans than
you might think.
turned into
Straighter men are
opera fans than you might think.
Posted by Arnold Zwicky at March 12, 2008 08:14 PM