Details

General

Description and behaviour

Form and usage:

According to Schultz-Lorentzen [16], this stem denotes 'a bone knob at the end of a bird dart'. Kleinschmidt [13] records this stem as ĸaĸuit (seemingly in singular), but notes that it is commonly extended as ĸaĸuiseĸ, which thus is the present form.

According to the Comparative Eskimo Dictionary [21], the reconstructed historical form is {qaqu(ʀ)}, and these authors do not explain the origin of the 'it' or 'iseq'. However, if the form ĸaĸuit in fact is singular, then we can assume that the final morpheme consists of /itə/, i.e. it ends on /ə/ like all other t-stems. What this morpheme might be is still unclear, but if this stem were further extended with /q/, we would obtain the form /qaquitəq/ and /t/ would then be assibilated to /s/ by the preceding /i/, thus giving the form /qaquisəq/, spelt qaquiseq in the new orthography. We use this as basis for the form recorded here, but note that this should be regarded as an hypothesis; cf. also the inflection sandhi section below.

Inflection sandhi:

The stem has gemination of /s/ to /tc/, similar to stems such as {tasiq}N, V{-usiq}N etc.

Furthermore, Kleinschmidt [13] and Ordbogeeraq [17] both note that when this stem takes a vowel-initial ending, such as absolutive 3sg/sg N{-a}, the form becomes qaquisaa. Thus, this is consistent with the morphemic form having a /ə/ as its final vowel.

Note that a stem-internal /ə/ normally would not actively alternate between [i] and [a] by the ə-rule, if the following phoneme changes, so this further indicates that the stem in fact is /qaquitə/, corresponding to qaquit, which is the form given by Kleinschmidt [13]. This strengthen the hypothesis that the form qaquiseq indeed is an extension of this stem with a superfluous /q/, which originally may just have been regarded as an absolutive singular marker.

Inflection

Declension pattern:

Notes on declension:

In this declension, it seems that the inflection stem before vowel-initial endings still behaves like /qaquitə/, so the pattern seems like a combination of the typical weak q-stem pattern with gemination and the regular tə-stem pattern.

Meanings and examples