Does any language use bound morphology to express the concept "less"?

Question

In English, many adjectives support the -er ending to express a notion of exceeding:

1. John is taller than Mary (is).
2. Mary is smarter than John (is).

Of course, you can also have the more analytic construction:

• Mary is more intelligent than John (is).

But with the notion of "does not exceed", less, only the analytic form is available:

• John is less smart than Mary is.
• John is less intelligent than Mary is.

Does any language express the less form using bound morphology the way we do with -er in (1) and (2)?

Answer 1

A diminutive is not the same as what a "less" morpheme would be — it lacks comparative semantics.

However, to answer your question, the answer is, no there is not any such language which expresses a concept of "less" synthetically, at least none has been found despite a very large (300+ language) cross-linguistic survey by Jonathan Bobalijk. See his paper "Universals in Comparative Morphology", for his explanation of why such a morpheme never occurs.

Answer 2

In Turkish, the suffic "-cE" gives this meaning when added to adjectives, such as "güzelce". It means that the person or thing is less beautiful than the mentioned thing. For instance:

Annesi gibi güzelce bir kız

It means that she is less beautiful than her mother. However, in some contexts it can mean "nearly". I asked which meaning people think of when they hear words to which this suffix was added; they answered "less". However, this research is not very broad or scientific; I have only asked the people I could contact. Maybe this answer will help you to some extent.

I have found a paper about this suffix; however, the section related to it is very little and not very much detailed.

Answer 3

Well, Krivoshein de Canese and Acosta Alcaraz' (2007:102) "Gramática Guarani" gives as "comparativo the inferioridad" ('inferiority comparative') the affix -ive, which attaches to the standard of comparison NP. Their example is "Susana omba'apo'ive Anagui" meaning 'Susana works less than Ana'. However, -i is a diminutive, and -ve is the comparative of superiority so... it seems that the meaning of inferiority is obtained compositionally from the superiority comparative...

Answer 4

I don't know any language that does exactly what you want; but it may interest you to know that the diminutive suffix -lus can be used with adjectives in Latin:

(1) aedes = room, house
(2) aedicula = little room or house

(1) acer = petulant
(2) acriculus = a little/bit petulant

What's behind this is that the distinction between nouns and adjectives was not felt to be very strict in Latin: acer can mean "petulant" or "a petulant person/thing". But the diminutive form can certainly be used when the word is used adjectivally/attributively, as in vir acriculus.

Note that this suffix is productive, but it is relatively uncommon—certainly less common than English forms with "less".

Derived suffixes that work the same way are -ulus, -culus, -(u)sculus, -(u)nculus, -illus, -ellus. They can all indicate a diminutive or a repeated action (as in credulus).