Qaqet (Kakat, Makakat, Maqaqet), or Baining, is a non-
Austronesian language from the
Baining family spoken in
East New Britain Province
East New Britain is a province of Papua New Guinea, consisting of the north-eastern part of the island of New Britain and the Duke of York Islands. The capital of the province is Kokopo, not far from the old capital of Rabaul, which was largely d ...
on the island of
New Britain
New Britain ( tpi, Niu Briten) is the largest island in the Bismarck Archipelago, part of the Islands Region of Papua New Guinea. It is separated from New Guinea by a northwest corner of the Solomon Sea (or with an island hop of Umboi the Dam ...
,
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
.
Overview
Qaqet is spoken by some 15,000 people in the
Gazelle Peninsula
The Gazelle Peninsula is a large peninsula in northeastern East New Britain, Papua New Guinea located on the island of New Britain within the Bismarck Archipelago, situated in the southwestern Pacific Ocean.
The Rabaul caldera is located on the ...
in the
East New Britain Province
East New Britain is a province of Papua New Guinea, consisting of the north-eastern part of the island of New Britain and the Duke of York Islands. The capital of the province is Kokopo, not far from the old capital of Rabaul, which was largely d ...
of
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
. Historically, the Qaqet used to lead highly mobile lives, subsisting of horticulture and hunting. Rather recently, colonial administrators have created permanent settlements.
Today, villages with major Qaqet-speaking populations are:
[Marley, Alexandra. 2013. ''Language Use amongst the Qaqet Baining: A sociolinguistic study of language choices in an ethnolinguistic minority in Papua New Guinea''. MA thesis, La Trobe University.]
*Raunsepna () in
Inland Baining Rural LLG
Inland Baining Rural LLG is a local-level government (LLG) located in the Baining Mountains of East New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea.
Wards
*01. Alakasam
*02. Lamarain
*03. Raunsepna ( Qaqet speakers)Marley, Alexandra. 2013. ''Language Us ...
*Kamanakam () in
Inland Baining Rural LLG
Inland Baining Rural LLG is a local-level government (LLG) located in the Baining Mountains of East New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea.
Wards
*01. Alakasam
*02. Lamarain
*03. Raunsepna ( Qaqet speakers)Marley, Alexandra. 2013. ''Language Us ...
*Walmetki () in
Lassul Baining Rural LLG
Lassul Baining Rural LLG is a local-level government (LLG) of East New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea.
Wards
*01. Poniar/Kanako
*02. Mobilum
*03. Takis
*04. Nangasn
*05. Traiwara
*06. Lassul
*07. Puktas
*08. Karo
*09. Matanakunai
*10. ...
Raunsepna is located in the mountainous interior, while the other two villages are located near the coast. Raunsepna's relative remoteness has implications for Qaqet's sociolinguistic status: as there are few outsiders there, Qaqet remains the dominant language in everyday life, and children acquire it as their first language. Kamanakam, by contrast, has seen an influx of settlers from adjacent ethnic groups, making inter-ethnic marriages common. This has resulted in
Tok Pisin
Tok Pisin (,Laurie Bauer, 2007, ''The Linguistics Student’s Handbook'', Edinburgh ; Tok Pisin ), often referred to by English speakers as "New Guinea Pidgin" or simply Pidgin, is a creole language spoken throughout Papua New Guinea. It is an ...
becoming the dominant language of that village.
Classification
Qaqet belongs to the small
Baining family, hence being a so-called
Papuan language
The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian and non-Australian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands, by around 4 million people. It is a strictly geogra ...
. The term ''Papuan'' is an umbrella classification that describes languages native to
New Guinea
New Guinea (; Hiri Motu
Hiri Motu, also known as Police Motu, Pidgin Motu, or just Hiri, is a language of Papua New Guinea, which is spoken in surrounding areas of Port Moresby (Capital of Papua New Guinea).
It is a simplified version of ...
and surrounding islands which are not part of the
Austronesian language family. The other members of the Baining family are
Mali
Mali (; ), officially the Republic of Mali,, , ff, 𞤈𞤫𞤲𞥆𞤣𞤢𞥄𞤲𞤣𞤭 𞤃𞤢𞥄𞤤𞤭, Renndaandi Maali, italics=no, ar, جمهورية مالي, Jumhūriyyāt Mālī is a landlocked country in West Africa. Mali ...
,
Qairaq,
Simbali,
Ura, and possibly
Makolkol. Makolkol is probably extinct, and the information available for it is insufficient for determining its genetic affiliation.
The Baining languages are grouped with the other non-Austronesian languages of the region into the
East Papuan Languages
The East Papuan languages is a defunct proposal for a family of Papuan languages spoken on the islands to the east of New Guinea, including New Britain, New Ireland, Bougainville, Solomon Islands, and the Santa Cruz Islands. There is no eviden ...
. However, despite attempts at establishing East Papuan as a genetic unit, the grouping remains purely geographical. Attempts at establishing relationships with neighbouring Papuan languages, such as
Taulil or
Butam, have so far not been successful.
Phonology
Qaqet has a moderately small phoneme inventory consisting of 16 consonantal and 4 vowel phonemes. The orthography used here follows Hellwig (2019), which is in turn based on the orthography developed by Parker & Parker (1974). Where different from the IPA notation, the orthographic representation is given in square brackets.
Consonants
The voiceless stops /p t k/ are often aspirated word-initially and unreleased word-finally. They have two other predictable allophones: voiced /b d g/ following a nasal, and lenited /v r q/ intervocalically. These last three phonemes probably arose historically out of their stop counterparts and are in the process of being phonemicized. While the alternation is still for the most part predictable, it has become contrastive for some aspectual verb stems. Also, loanwords don't undergo the lenition process: ''akar'' 'cars' (from Tok Pisin ''kar'').
The velar stop is almost always palatalized in the vicinity of the vowel /i/. This holds for its voiced and fricativized allophones as well. Hence: ''a=vadem-ki''
βaⁿdəmɟi'trap', ''vrli-ki''
ɽiʝi'cousin'. However, there are a couple of counterexamples, where palatalization doesn't occur even though it would be expected. For instance, in the word
ɣiapki'chicken', the velar fricative is not palatalized, even though it is followed by /i/. This might be explained by an earlier form of the word containing the sequence /ai/. In fact, the alternative realization
ɣaiapkiis attested.
The voiced stops appear as allophones of voiceless stops (as explained above), but also as phonemes in their own right. They can occur initially, intervocalically as well as after consonants, but not at the end of a syllable. They are usually prenasalized.
The voiceless fricative /s/ alternates with
in free variation. Speakers tend to associate
with the southern and
with the northern dialect, respectively. In practice, however, both variants seem to be used by speakers of all dialects, with no change in meaning.
Vowels
Qaqet has four short vowel phonemes:
The close vowels are usually realized as lax
ʊ /i u/ can have allophones of semivowels
wwhen preceding other vowels. The open vowel /a/ undergoes assimilation to adjacent sounds: it is realized as back
before
but as front
before palatal consonants, as well as front vowels in the next syllable. There is also variation across speakers between
and
The phoneme /ə/ is much shorter than the other vowels, especially in the vicinity of sonorants, where it is frequently elided, particularly in rapid speech. The vowel
only occurs in recent loanwords, such as ''botol'' 'bottle' (from Tok Pisin).
Vowel quantity is generally not contrastive in Qaqet, but long vowels do occur as the result of vowel sequences across morpheme boundaries. Sequences of /a/ and a high vowel become long monophthongs: ''a=ilany''
''eːlæɲ'leg/foot', ''a=ulan''
''oːlan'eel'. The vowel /i/ generally does not have a long counterpart, but is realized as
ː eː~
iː'most'. The short vowel /ə/ does not have a long counterpart. There are a small number of roots with long vowels which cannot be explained as the result of underlying vowel sequences, e.g. ''laan'' 'type of bamboo' vs. ''lan'' 'bones'.
There are diphthongs /ia/, /iu/, /ui/, /ua/, which occur even within roots. The diphthongs /ai/ and /au/ do occur, but are more commonly realized as long vowels
ːand
ː
Phonotactics
Qaqet's syllable structure can be summarized as . All consonants can occur at the onset of a syllable. Consonant clusters at the onset of a syllable usually consist of an obstruent followed by a sonorant, e.g. 'intensely', 'eagle'; but there are also clusters of a nasal and a liquid, as in 'cross'. In coda position, the plain stops /p t k/, the nasals /m n ɲ ŋ/, the fricative /s/ and the liquids /ɽ l/ can occur, but not the voiced stops /b d g/ or the lenited versions of the stops /β r ɣ/.
Morphology and syntax
Word classes in Qaqet include nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and particles. As in many
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
, adjectives share many properties with nouns, but they are still different enough to be considered their own word class. However, many roots can occur in different word classes without any derivational morphology. This process, known in linguistics as
conversion
Conversion or convert may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* "Conversion" (''Doctor Who'' audio), an episode of the audio drama ''Cyberman''
* "Conversion" (''Stargate Atlantis''), an episode of the television series
* "The Conversion" ...
, is reminiscent of English (e.g. 'to walk' and 'a walk').
The most striking feature of Qaqet nominal morphology is its
noun class
In linguistics, a noun class is a particular category of nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of the characteristic features of its referent, such as gender, animacy, shape, but such designations are often clearly conventional. Some ...
system: all nouns belong to one of eight classes, two of which are based on sex, the others on shape. Additionally, nouns are marked for
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
(singular, dual, and plural). Typologically unusual, some nouns have an
unmarked plural, rather than singular form. Adjectives, demonstratives, pronouns and verbs agree with nouns with respect to noun class and number. Both nominal classification as well as the singular-dual-plural distinction are common in East Papuan Languages. Qaqet also has articles, but no
case
Case or CASE may refer to:
Containers
* Case (goods), a package of related merchandise
* Cartridge case or casing, a firearm cartridge component
* Bookcase, a piece of furniture used to store books
* Briefcase or attaché case, a narrow box to c ...
.
Qaqet verbs distinguish
aspect
Aspect or Aspects may refer to:
Entertainment
* ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art
* Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company
* Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England
* ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...
by using different verbal stems, and
tense by using different subject indexes. They can also encode the object. Qaqet uses
prepositions rather than postpositions. Just as in English, they can introduce arguments and adjuncts. They also frequently combine with verbs to form idiomatic meanings. There is also a dedicated class of
particles
In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass.
They vary greatly in size or quantity, from su ...
, which are never obligatory but convey important discourse information. This is similar to languages like German.
Word order is generally
SVO. This fact, along with the use of prepositions, is rather unusual, since
Papuan languages
The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian and non-Australian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands, by around 4 million people. It is a strictly geogra ...
tend to be verb-final and postpositional. Those features might be attributed to influence from the neighboring Austronesian languages.
Nouns
Within the noun phrase, determiners (including possessor indexes, articles, indefinite pronouns and demonstratives) usually precede the head noun, while modifiers (adjectives, numerals, quantifiers, prepositional phrases, directionals) tend to follow it, although there are exceptions. In the following example, the noun is preceded by the demonstrative ''luqa'' and the article ''ama''-, while the adjective follows it:
As can be seen from the example, adjectives agree with the noun they modify in noun class and number.
Nouns are almost always preceded by some determining element: an article, a possessor index, a demonstrative or an indefinite pronoun, or combinations of these. The generic noun marker ''a'' contrasts with the articles ''ama'' and ''ma''. The former can be described as a Stage III article following Greenberg (1978):
it probably evolved from a definite article, but has now lost all of those functions and merely marks nouns. It cannot occur with most proper names, nor in combination with possessor indexes. The articles ''ama'' and ''ma'' can occur even with proper names, and they have a more specific meaning than the general noun marker ''a''. Their main function is to mark a noun for referentiality. Moreover, ''ama'' can connect a qualifying adjective to a preceding noun, as can be seen in the example above. The difference between ''ama'' and ''ma'' is that the latter marks a noun as inherently identifiable. Hence, it frequently occurs with proper nouns.
Numerals
Below is a list of Qaqet numerals (see Hellwig 2019: 90-91, Tab. 31).
Qaqet's number system is basically decimal, with base words for 10, 100, and 1000. However, 5 is used as an auxiliary base, such that the words for 6-9 are formed by adding the numerals for 1-4 to the number 5. The word for 1 consists of the root and the noun class suffix ''-ka'', while the word for 2 uses the same root with the dual suffix ''-iam''. The same logic is applied to form the numerals for 10 and 20. Addition is expressed through the element ''ngena-'' 'plus, together with'.
There are two structures for forming higher multiples of ten. One puts 'ten' first, then adds the factor with the article ''ama-''. The other puts the factor first and inserts the preposition ''ne-'' 'from, with' (''nama-'' is a contraction of that preposition and the article ''ama-''). Both of these structures were obtained through elicitation. In practice, Qaqet speakers generally switch to Tok Pisin for numerals above 10.
It is not known whether any of the higher numerals are used in natural speech.
References
Further reading
*
External links
* ELAR archive o
Language socialisation and the transmission of Qaqet Baining (Papua New Guinea)* Materials on Qaqet are included in the open access
Arthur Capell
Arthur Capell (28 March 1902 – 10 August 1986) was an Australian linguist, who made major contributions to the study of Australian languages, Austronesian languages and Papuan languages.
Early life
Capell was born in Newtown, New South Wales ...
collection
AC2 and the Meinrad Scheller's field recordings
MS2 held by
Paradisec
The Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) is a cross-institutional project that supports work on endangered languages and cultures of the Pacific and the region around Australia. They digitise reel-to ...
.
{{Languages of Papua New Guinea
Languages of East New Britain Province
Baining languages