One way of stucturing particle-based comparisons that I have not seen is one of using two particles, one for each comparand. Let's notate these as C_g and C_l, for comparand_greater and comparand_lesser. In the most basic expression, you maybe coordinate them with an 'and':
C_g John and C_l Eric is fast(er)
John is faster than Eric
-(er) might be superfluous, but what if there are several other things that could be the compared quality, e.g.
C_g John and C_l Eric sail heavy boats often.
Does John sail heavier boats often, or does he sail heavy boats more often? So, for now, I'm going to keep the -er morpheme here.
What benefits does such a system bring? It signals that a comparison is coming very early. It also permits for some ... oddities.
C_l Eric.nom counted C_g the sheep.acc.
Eric counted fewer than the sheep. (Eric didn't count all the sheep)
One could also imagine situations where the particles are off in different main clauses, and maybe even mark non-NPs?:
John hits C_l hard and Eric can C_g take.
Eric can take harder hits than John dishes out.
This is not meant to be a full description of a system, but just some thoughts on how to restructure comparison and maybe innovate a slight bit, as well as the possible concerns one might look at.
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