Comparative

Many languages (particularly Indo-European ones) have special markers to indicate the comparative (forms meaning, e.g., ‘bigger’, ‘more exciting’). In English, the comparative is usually formed by either placing ‘more’ in front of the adjective (‘more interesting’) or adding ‘-er’ to the word in the case of monosyllabic adjectives (‘hotter’). This comparatively straightforward procedure does not apply to Nahuatl, which has several phrases available to say ‘X is more adjective than Y’. In English, the phrase indicating the person/thing against which the comparison is made is introduced with ‘than’ and follows the comparative. For the sake of convenience, we will use the express “than-phrase” to refer to the corresponding part of the Nahuatl comparison (even though there is no simple word for ‘than’).

A major type of comparative phrase consists of saying (with assorted variants), ‘X is adjective, Y not’. There is often a mark of intensification in front of the “adjective”. This can be oc ‘still’, cencâ ‘very’, achi ‘rather’, yê ‘yet’ (see 33.7), or more often with a combination of these: oc achi (most frequent), oc cencâ, oc yê, oc yê achi, oc yê cencâ:

Tāchcāuh ‘strongly’ or huālcâ ‘more’ can be used in place of achi or cencâ, but most commonly oc tāchcāuh or oc huālcâ is followed by inic:

Tlapanahuia ‘it is surpassing’ can also be used:

Note carefully that in these constructions we do not have **oc nitāchcāuh/nihuālcâ or nitlapanahuia; these verbs remain in the third person singular because their subject is the clause inic nichicāhuac ‘how I'm strong’.