zum Inhalt springen

Qaqet plural: How to talk about more than one thing

Henrike Frye, Anne Wiesner; illustrations by Lena Pointner

Usually, when plurality is expressed in a language, something is added to the noun or the noun is changed internally (see the World Atlas of Language Structures for the possibilities).

This makes sense even intuitively: If something is there MORE OFTEN in the world, you would expect that you also need MORE LANGUAGE to talk about this thing. In English, e.g., you have ONE thing, but MANY thing-s.

However, some languages are different, and Qaqet is one of them. So let’s take a closer look: How do you talk about more than one thing in Qaqet?
 
The following examples contain some nouns (the Qaqet words for 'basket', 'baskets', 'fruit', 'fruits') – Can you find out from the examples how Qaqet forms its singular and plural nouns? The solutions can be found in the slider.

 Example 1)

ke= mnyim maqat n= ama= gata
he= looks around among= the= basket
he looks around among the baskets.

 

 Example 2)

kua qa= rar ama= gam -ga
QUESTION he= takes the= fruit -singular.masculine
should he take one fruit…

 

 Example 3)

de= qua qa= rar ama= gata -qi se= nas
and= QUESTION he= takes the= basket -singular.feminine with= self
…or should he take the whole basket?

 

 Example 4)

 

 

 

de= qa= rar ama= gam ama= depguas na= nget
and= he= takes the= fruit the= three from= them
and he takes fruits, three of them

 

Conclusion

… so it seems, instead of adding MORE language when there are MORE fruits or baskets, Qaqet is doing the exact opposite. This is a very rare feature in the languages of the world and makes Qaqet very special.