Chapter 1 is about the social and semiotic mediation of comparative grounds. In particular, the way people come to understand and alter the relative intensity of entities and events. Focusing on the multiple processes that mediate people’s understandings of landslides in a Mayan village in highland Guatemala, it shows the ways comparative grounds relate to communicative practices and social conventions. In addition, it highlights the political, economic, affective, and ecological stakes at work in such forms of mediation.

Chapter 7 is about the colonial comparative construction in Q’eqchi’-Maya. It analyzes the form and function of various tokens of this construction, as found in a colonial grammar. It compares this colonial construction with the modern comparative construction, showing how they differ and elucidating the historical relation that connects them. It shows that both constructions were present in the colonial period, overlapped for some time in their comparative function, and are still in use today. At some point around the middle-to-end of the nineteenth century, the colonial construction gave up its comparative function (retaining its original spatial usage, along with a secondary metaphorical usage), and the modern construction took on its comparative function (while retaining its original spatial usage). It argues that the colonial construction did not evolve into the modern construction. Rather, both constructions are part of a larger comparative complex, involving many variants, that has long been active.