Ket language
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Ket | |
---|---|
Imbak | |
Native to | Russia |
Region | Krasnoyarsk Krai |
Ethnicity | 1,220 Ket people (2010 census)[1] |
Native speakers
|
210 (2010)[1] |
Dené–Yeniseian?
|
|
Cyrillic | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | ket |
Glottolog | kett1243 [2] |
The Ket /ˈkɛt/[3] language, or more specifically Imbak and formerly known as Yenisei Ostyak /ˈɒstiæk/,[3] is a Siberian language long thought to be an isolate, the sole surviving language of a Yeniseian language family. It is spoken along the middle Yenisei basin by the Ket people.
The language is threatened with extinction—the number of ethnic Kets that are native speakers of the language had dropped from 1,225 in 1926 to 537 in 1989. Another Yeniseian language, Yugh, is believed to have recently become extinct.
Contents
Classification
Attempts have been made by Soviet scholars to establish a relationship with either Burushaski or the Sino-Tibetan languages, and it frequently forms part of the Dene–Caucasian hypothesis. None of these attempts has been conclusive. Joseph Greenberg proposed a link between Ket and other Yeniseian languages and the Na-Dene language group of North America in his final study of Eurasiatic languages. In February 2008, linguist Edward Vajda also submitted a paper on the proposed link between Ket with the Na-Dene languages. Now published in 2010, Vajda's paper has been favorably reviewed by several experts on Na-Dene and Yeniseian languages, including Michael Krauss, Jeff Leer, James Kari, and Heinrich Werner, as well as a number of other well-known linguists, including Bernard Comrie, Johanna Nichols, Victor Golla, Michael Fortescue, and Eric Hamp, so that a broad consensus has formed in support of this connection[citation needed]. Some experts on Yeniseian remain extremely skeptical or reject the hypothesis (e.g. Stefan Georg).
Documentation
The earliest observations about the language were published by P. S. Pallas in 1788 in a travel diary (Путешествия по разным провинциям Русского Государства Puteshestviya po raznim provintsiyam Russkogo Gosudarstva). In 1858, M. A. Castrén published the first grammar and dictionary (Versuch einer jenissei-ostjakischen und Kottischen Sprachlehre), which also included material on the Kot language. During the 19th century, the Kets were mistaken for a tribe of the Finno-Ugric Khanty. A. Karger in 1934 published the first grammar (Кетский язык Ketskij jazyk), as well as a Ket primer (Букварь на кетском языке Bukvar' na ketskom jazyke), and a new treatment appeared in 1968, written by A. Kreinovich.
E. Alekseyenko has written a historical-ethnological treatment of the Kets (Кеты Kety, 1967). Western Washington University historical linguist Edward Vajda offers better substantiated findings into the origins of the Ket people, where DNA claims show genetic affinities with that of Tibetan, Burmese, and others.[4] Edward Vajda spent a year in Siberia (2005–2006) studying the Ket people, and finds a relationship of Ket language to that of Native American Na-Dene languages, and also suggests the tonal system of the Ket language is closer to that of Vietnamese than any of the native Siberian languages.[5] His (2004) monograph Ket is the first modern scholarly grammar of the Ket language in English. (Lueders 2008)
Phonology
Vowels
Front | Central | Back | |
---|---|---|---|
Close | i | ɨ | u |
Mid | ɛ1 | ə | ɔ1 |
Open | a 2 |
- The normally open-mid /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ are pronounced as close-mid [e] and [o], respectively, when they have the high-steady tone.
- /a/ freely varies between [æ], [a], [ɐ], and [ɑ].
Consonants
Vajda analyses Ket as having only 12 consonant phonemes:
Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nasal | m | n | ŋ | ||||
Plosive | voiceless | t | k | q | |||
voiced | b | d | |||||
Fricative | central | s | ç | h | |||
lateral | ɮ |
There is much allophony, and the phonetic inventory of consonants is essentially as below. This is the level of description reflected by the Ket alphabet.
Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nasal | m | n | ŋ | |||||
Plosive | voiceless | p | t | k | q | ʔ | ||
voiced | b | d | g | ɢ | ||||
Fricative | central | voiceless | s | ç | (x) | (χ) | h | |
voiced | β | ʝ | ɣ | ʁ | ||||
lateral | ɮ | |||||||
Flap | ɾ | |||||||
Trill | r |
Furthermore, all nasal consonants in Ket have voiceless allophones at the end of a monosyllabic word with a glottalized or descending tone (i.e. [m, n, ŋ] turn into [m̥, n̥, ŋ̥]), likewise, [ɮ] becomes [ɬ] in the same situation. Alveolars are often pronounced laminal and possibly palatalized, though not in the vicinity of a uvular consonant. /q/ is normally pronounced with affrication, as [qχ].
Tone
Descriptions of Ket vary widely in the number of contrastive tones they report: as many as eight and as few as zero have been counted. Given this wide disagreement, whether or not Ket is a tonal language is debatable,[6] although recent works by Ket specialists Edward Vajda and Stefan Georg defend the existence of tone.
In tonal descriptions, Ket does not employ a tone on every syllable but instead uses one tone per word. Following Vajda's description of Southern Ket, the five basic tones are as follows:[7]
Tone name | Glottalized | High-Even | Rising Falling | Falling | Rising High-Falling |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tone contour | [˧˦ʔ] (34’) | [˥] (5) | [˩˧.˧˩] (13.31) | [˧˩] (31) | [˩˧.˥˧] (13.53) |
Example | [kɛʔt] "person" |
[sýl] "blood" |
[su᷈ːl] ([sǔûl]) "hand sled" |
[qàj] "elk" |
[bə̌ntân] "mallard ducks" |
The glottalized tone features pharyngeal or laryngeal constriction, or a full glottal stop that interrupts the vowel.
Georg's 2007 description of Ket tone is similar to the above, but reduces the basic number of tonemes to four, while moving the rising high-falling tone plus a variant to a class of tonemes only found in multisyllabic words. With some exceptions caused by certain prefixes or clitics, the domain of tones in a multisyllabic word is limited to the first two syllables.[8]
Incorporation
Ket makes significant use of incorporation. Incorporation is not limited to nouns, and can also include verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and bound morphemes found only in the role of incorporated elements. Incorporation also occurs as both a lexicalized process - the combination of verb and incorporate being treated as a distinct lexical element, with a meaning often based around the incorporated element - and a paradigmatic one, where the incorporation is performed spontaneously for particular semantic and pragmatic effect[9] Forms of incorporation include:
- Nominal incorporation, most commonly used to describe the instrumental part of an action, but sometimes used to describe patients instead. Instrumental incorporation doesn't affect the transitivity of the verb (though there are examples where this form of incorporation is used to describe agentless changes of state), while patient incorporation can make a transitive verb intransitive. Patient incorporation is usually used for patients that are wholly effected by an action (such as being brought into existence by it); more generally affected patients are typically incorporated only when significantly defocused or backgrounded.[10]
- Verbal incorporation, more specifically the incorporation of verbal infinitives (rather than roots) into the verb complex. This form of incorporation is used to signify aspect and form causatives. Incorporated infinitives may bring incorporated elements of their own into the verb as well.[11]
- Adjectival incorporation, with an incorporated adjective describing the target or final state of an action.[12]
- Adverbial incorporation, where a local adverb is used to describe the direction or path of a movement.[13]
Ket alphabet
In the 1930s a Latin-based alphabet was developed and used:
A a | Ā ā | Æ æ | B b | Ç ç | D d | E e | Ē ē |
Ə ə | F f | G g | H h | Ҕ ҕ | I i | Ī ī | J j |
K k | L l | M m | N n | Ņ ņ | Ŋ ŋ | O o | Ō ō |
P p | Q q | R r | S s | Ş ş | T t | U u | Ū ū |
V v | Z z | Ƶ ƶ | Ь ь |
In the 1980s a new, Cyrillic-based, alphabet was created:
А а | Б б | В в | Г г | Ӷ ӷ | Д д | Е е | Ё ё |
Ж ж | З з | И и | Й й | К к | Ӄ ӄ | Л л | М м |
Н н | Ӈ ӈ | О о | Ө ө | П п | Р р | С с | Т т |
У у | Ф ф | Х х | Ц ц | Ч ч | Ш ш | Щ щ | Ъ ъ |
Ә ә | Ы ы | Ь ь | ’ | Э э | Ю ю | Я я |
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Ket at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student's Handbook, Edinburgh
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ [1] Archived March 3, 2007 at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ Ian Maddieson, "Tone". The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. http://wals.info/feature/13
- ↑ Vajda (2004), pp. 8-12
- ↑ Georg 2007, pp. 49, 56-58.
- ↑ Georg 2007, pp. 233, 235.
- ↑ Georg 2007, pp. 236.
- ↑ Georg 2007, pp. 233-234.
- ↑ Georg 2007, pp. 232-233.
- ↑ Georg 2007, pp. 233.
Literature
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External links
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Ket language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator |
- Endangered Languages of the Indigenous Peoples of Siberia – The Ket Language
- Ket language vocabulary with loanwords (from the World Loanword Database)
- Filtchenko, Andrei. 2001. Ket Language
- Georg, Stefan. 2006. A Descriptive Grammar of Ket (Yenisei-Ostyak). Folkestone, Kent: Global Oriental. ISBN 978-1-901903-58-4
- Kazakevich, Olga, et al. 2006?. Multimedia Database of Ket Language, Moscow State (Lomonosov) University
- Lueders, Ulrich. Books: Language Description, Ket: Vajda. Publisher's announcement on LINGUIST List
- Vajda, Edward J. 2000. Ket and other Yeneseic Peoples
- Vajda, Edward J. 2006. The Ket People – Google Video
- Table of contents and ordering information for The Dene–Yeniseian Connection.
- Notices and news items on Dene–Yeniseian
- Viikberg, Jüri. Kets. In The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire, NGO Red Book, ISBN 9985-9369-2-2 (Wikipedia article)
- Ket basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
- Silent Extinction: Language Loss Reaches Crisis Levels