Previous scholarship on adjective comparison in eModE has considered a number of factors that may be responsible for the distribution of the inflectional and periphrastic comparative strategies, i.e. the length and type of ending of the adjective or the register and text type in which the adjective occurs (Greenwood 1729: 111-113, Pound 1901: 9-10, Kytö 1996: 129-134, Kytö and Romaine 1997: 338-339).
    The purpose of this paper is to provide a better understanding of the peculiarities of the English comparative system in the Renaissance period. It examines the possibility that the distribution of comparative forms may be related to a linguistic factor that has not been taken into account in previous literature, namely, a semantic difference between the inflectional and periphrastic comparative forms. The discussion will focus particularly on a third mode of comparison — double comparative forms — which so far has received very little scholarly attention (cf. Schlüter to appear). The paper analyses the semantic-pragmatic features that differentiate double from simple (i.e. inflectional and periphrastic) comparative forms and offers a contrastive study of the social distribution of double comparative forms in early Modern and Present-day English.

References
Greenwood, J. (1729) An essay towards a practical English grammar, describing the genius and nature of the English tongue, London: Arthur Bettersworth.
Kytö, M. (1996) "‘The best and most excellentest way’: the rivalling forms of adjective comparison in late Middle and early Modern English", Svartvik, J. (ed.) Words. Proceedings of an International Symposium, Lund, 25-26 August 1995, Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhers Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, pp. 123-144.
Kytö, M. and S. Romaine (1997) "Competing forms of adjective comparison in Modern English: what could be more quicker and easier and more effective?" Nevalainen, T., L. Kahlas-Tarkka (eds.) To Explain the Present: Studies in the Changing English Language in Honour of Matti Rissanen, Helsinki: Société Néophilologique. pp. 329-52.
Pound, L. (1901) The comparison of adjectives in the 15th and 16th centuries, Heidelberg: Carl Winter.
Schlüter, J. (to appear 2001) "Why worser is better. The double comparative in 16th to 17th century English", Language Variation and Change 13.