This grammar is a first detailed description of Qaqet a non-Austronesian language spoken in
the mountainous interior of East New Britain Province Papua New Guinea. Qaqet belongs to the
small Baining language family (comprising six languages) but its wider genetic affiliations
remain unclear. It is included among the geographically-defined East Papuan languages. The
grammar presents a synchronic description of the language. From a language family perspective
the Baining languages are structurally fairly similar but there are considerable differences
in detail that point to different language-internal developments and grammaticalization paths.
From an East Papuan and areal perspective Qaqet exhibits both typical East Papuan features
(e.g. nominal classification possessor possessed order highly compositional lexicon) as well
as areal features (e.g. AVO ~ SV constituent order articles and determiners prepositions).
The description is based on primary data collected during fieldwork (from 2011 onwards)
including both natural and elicited data. The description thereby provides new analyses and
insights that are relevant to our understanding of the genetic and areal relationships in this
region.
