Ket language

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 dropped from 1,225 in 1926 to 537 in 1989. According to the UNESCO census, this number has since fallen to 150. There was a 2005 census reporting 485, but it is suspected to be inflated.^[4] Another Yeniseian language, Yugh, is believed to have recently become extinct.

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, the 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. 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 Ketheads 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 Kethead 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.^[5] 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.^[6] His (2004) monograph Ket is the first modern scholarly grammar of the Ket language in English. (Lueders 2008)

Phonology

Vowels

1. The normally open-mid /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ are pronounced as close-mid [e] and [o], respectively, when they have the high-steady tone.
2. /a/ freely varies between [æ], [a], [ɐ], and [ɑ].

Consonants

Vajda analyses Ket as having only 12 consonant phonemes:

It is one of the 3 languages to lack both /p/ and /g/^[7]

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.

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 [q^χ].

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,^[8] although recent works by Ket specialists Edward Vajda and Stefan Georg defend the existence of tone.^[9]

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:^[10]

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.^[11]

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^[12] 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.^[13]
• 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.^[14]
• Adjectival incorporation, with an incorporated adjective describing the target or final state of an action.^[15]
• Adverbial incorporation, where a local adverb is used to describe the direction or path of a movement.^[16]

Ket alphabet

In the 1930s a Latin-based alphabet was developed and used:

In the 1980s a new, Cyrillic-based, alphabet was created:

Decline and current use

Ket was used as a primary language among the Ket people up until the early Soviet Period, when all USSR citizens were forced to speak only Russian. Ket people were subjected to collectivization and then eventually sent to Russian-only boarding schools from the 1930s to 1960s. Now, Ket is taught as a subject in some primary schools, but only older adults are fluent and few are raising their children with the language. There are no known monolingual speakers.^[17]

References

Literature

• Georg, Stefan (2007). Introduction, Phonology, Morphology. A Descriptive Grammar of Ket (Yenisei-Ostyak). 1. Folkestone, Kent, UK: Global Oriental Ltd. ISBN 978-1-901903-58-4. 
• Karger,, N. K. (1934). Кетский язык. — Языки и письменность народов Севера. Ч. III. Moscow, Leningrad. 
• Kreinovich,, E. A. (1968). Кетский язык. — Языки народов СССР. Т. V., Leningrad. 
• Vajda, Edward J. (2000). Ket Prosodic Phonology. Languages of the World. 15. Munich: Lincom Europa. 
• Vajda, Edward J. (2004). Ket. Languages of the World. Munich: Lincom Europa. ISBN 3-89586-221-5. 
• Vajda, M. Zinn, E.; Zinn, M. (2004). Morfologicheskii slovar ketskogo glagola: na osnove iuzhno-ketskogo dialekta. = Morphological dictionary of the Ket verb: Southern dialect /. 
• Vajda, Edward J.; Kari, J., Editor; Potter, B. (2010). Siberian Link with Na-Dene Languages The Dene–Yeniseian Connection. Anthropological Papers of the University of Alaska, new series. 5. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Fairbanks, Department of Anthropology. pp. 33–99. 

External links

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