In Ṭuroyo (Neo-Aramaic), comparatives can be built in three different ways: 1. by using the shortened form of the adjective (the so-called ‘absolute’, or ‘indeterminate’ state); 2. with the help of an Arabic pattern afʕal; 3. by attaching a suffix -tər, borrowed from Kurmanji.

The first strategy is the only surviving example of an older Aramaic distinction between the definite and indefinite nominal forms: cf. Syriac malk-e ṭåb-e ‘good kings’ vs. malk-e ṭåb-in ‘the kings are good’.

In Ṭuroyo, the old indefinite form is used only to produce comparatives, mostly from adjectives of Aramaic origin: basimo ‘sweet, pleasant’ > basəm, but well-adapted Arabic borrowings can have this form as well: naʕimo ‘small’ > naʕəm.

The second pattern, Arabic afʕal, is not used with adjectives of Aramaic origin, but is productive with adjectives of Arabic and Kurmanji origin: noquṣo ‘little (in quantity)’ > anqaṣ ‘less’; ṣpahi ‘beautiful’ > aṣpah.

Finally, the suffix -tər is the most recently borrowed of the three, and it aggressively pushes the other two forms out.

First, it is used for building comparatives from adjectives of Kurdish origin: pis ‘bad’ > pis-tər ‘worse’, zangin ‘rich’ > zangin-tər ‘richer’. And occasionally from non-Kurdish ones: ṣaʕbo ‘difficult’ (< Arab.) > ṣaʕbo-tər.

Second, it ‘strengthens’ the comparatives built according to the first two patterns: ṭawwo ‘good’ > ṭaw ‘better’ and ṭaw-tər ‘id.’; pis ‘bad’ > apyas ‘worse’ and apyastər.

Note the mind-boggling form apyastər: it is a Kurdish adjective pis, from a which a comparative was built according to the Arabic pattern, and then it received a suffix of the Kurdish origin!

Third, the -tər suffix has started spreading into other word classes (nouns and adverbs). Something that, to my knowledge, does not happen in Kurmanji.

It builds comparative adjectives from nouns: gawro ‘man, husband’ > gawərtər ‘manlier’, aġa ‘tribal chieftan; landowner’ > aġatər ‘someone who is better suited to be a leader (?)’

And some interesting examples for adverbs: harke ‘here’ > harketər ‘closer to here, to where we are’, lugab ‘on the other side’ > lugabtər ‘more to the other side’.

Now, these formations from nouns and adverbs are not frequent, yet they occur in the corpus and might become more frequent in the future.

Hope you all enjoyed reading! @lameensouag