qal

Maltese

Root
q-w-l
6 terms

Etymology

A suppletive formation: The third-person forms of the perfect are from Arabic قَالَ (qāla, “to say”); all other forms are from أَعَادَ (ʔaʕāda, “to repeat, say repeatedly”).

The use of the latter verb in the imperfect tense is somewhat understandable, because one will more often mention the fact that someone says something repeatedly or generally, rather than that they are saying something right now (though, of course, the imperfect is also used for the future). More surprising is perhaps that أَعادَ (ʔaʕāda) also conquered the first and second persons of the perfect. This, in turn, could be due to a parallelism with other verbs with a long stem vowel (“hollow roots”), where these forms are phonetically closer to the imperfect than to the third person (cf. sab, sibt, isib, or kien, kont, ikun).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ʔaːl/
• IPA^(key): /kaːl/ (archaic)

Verb

qal (imperfect jgħid, past participle moqul or mequl or maqul)

1. to say; to tell

   Synonym: għad

Conjugation

Conjugation of qal
		singular				plural
		1st person	2nd person	3rd person		1st person	2nd person	3rd person
perfect	m	għidt	għidt	qal		għidna	għidtu	qalu
	f			qalet
imperfect	m	ngħid	tgħid	jgħid		ngħidu	tgħidu	jgħidu
	f			tgħid
imperative			għid				għidu

Quinault

Noun

qal

1. water
2. river
3. a certain constellation, a somewhat triangular arrangement of stars

Alternative forms

• qalʼ

Further reading

• Lawrence R. Morgan, Kootenay-Salishan Linguistic Comparisons. A Preliminary Study (thesis, Vancouver, University of British Columbia, 1980), page 95
• Ronald Leroy Olson, The Quinault Indians: Adze, canoe, and house types of the Northwest (1967)