In his book Studies in English ([1]) Stoffel says ,
in a sentence like "Rachel is no more courageous than Saul(is)",
we have the full-stressed word-negative no prefixed to a comparative,
and here it has the force of changing the sense of more than into that of as little as.
His explanation is
the word-negative no in this case acts both on the notion of superiority expressed by more,
and on the meaning of the notion of which superiority is predicated.
The effects are
- superiority is changed into equality
If I say of a man that he is not my superior, I imply that I am his equal.
- courageousness is changed into uncourageousness
the full-stressed word-negative not in "it is not fair", expresses,
not negation, but opposition, so that "it is not fair" is equivalent to "it is unfair".
In this way the predicate in our sentence becomes the expression of equality of uncourageousness;
that is, no more courageous than comes to mean as litte courageous as
The following is the Jespersen's remark ([2]) about Stoffel's distinction based on the observation above between no more than and not more than.
some of his distinctions seem too subtle and are rarely observed even by accurate writers.
[1] Studies in English, C. Stoffel (1894)
[2] A MODERN ENGLISH GRAMMAR ON HISTORICAL PRINCIPLES, O. Jespersen (1949)
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