Page "Grammatical number" Paragraph 43

The quadral number, if it existed, would denote four items together, as trial does three.

No natural language has it, nor is there any proof that any natural language ever did.

It was once thought to exist in the pronoun systems of Marshallese, spoken in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean, and in Sursurunga ( Hutchisson 1986 ), in Tangga ( Capell 1971: 260-262 ; Beaumont 1976: 390 ), and in several other Austronesian languages.

While not all of these languages are adequately attested, it turns out that Sursurunga instead has both a " lesser paucal " ( labeled " trial ", but in fact referring to small groups, with typically three or four members ) and a " greater paucal " ( misnamed the " quadral ", as it has a minimum of four, e. g. a pair of dyadic kin terms )— the distinction is along the lines of " a few " vs. " several ";— and that what Marshallese actually has is a trial and a paucal.

None of them has a " quadral "; in at least two cases the field workers who originally suggested they did have a " quadral " were also the first to publish a peer-reviewed article contradicting that suggestion.