Ket language

The Ket language, or more specifically Imbak and formerly known as Yenisei Ostyak, is a Siberian language and 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 latest reports from linguists, this number has since fallen to less than 30. A 2005 census reported 485 native speakers, but this number is suspected to be inflated. According to a local news source, the number of remaining Ket speakers is around 10 to 20. Another Yeniseian language, Yugh, became extinct in the 1970s.

History

Documentation

The earliest observations about the language were published by Peter Simon Pallas in 1788 in a travel diary. During the 19th century, the Ket were mistaken for a tribe of the Finno-Ugric Khanty. A. Karger in 1934 published the first grammar, as well as a Ket primer, and a new treatment appeared in 1968, written by A. Kreinovich.

Decline and current use

Ket people were subjected to collectivization in the 1930s. In the 1950s and 1960s, according to the recollections of informants, they were sent to Russian-only boarding schools, which led to the ceasing of language transmission between generations. 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. Kellog, Russia, is the only place where Ket is still taught in schools. Special books are provided for grades second through fourth but after those grades there is only Russian literature to read that describes Ket culture. There are no known monolingual speakers as of 2006. A children's book, A Bit Lost by Chris Haughton, was translated into the language in 2013. Alexander Kotusov was a Ket folk singer and poet who died in 2019.
Only three localities, Kellog, Surgutikha and Maduika, retain a native Ket-speaking population in the present day. Other villages such as Serkovo and Pakulikha were destroyed in the second half of the 20th century, dispersing the local Ket population to nearby towns.

Dialects

Ket has three dialects: Southern, Central and Northern. All the dialects are very similar to each other and Kets from different groups are able to understand each other. The most common southern dialect was used for the standardized written Ket.
The three remaining Ket-majority localities natively speak different dialects. Southern Ket is spoken in Kellog, Central Ket in Surgutikha and Northern Ket in Maduika.

Phonology

Vowels

Georg classifies,, and as marginal phonemes.

Consonants

Vajda analyses Ket as having only 12 consonant phonemes:
It is one of the few languages to lack both and, along with Arapaho, Goliath, Obokuitai, Palauan, and Efik, as well as classical Arabic and some modern Arabic dialects.
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, likewise, becomes in the same situation. Alveolars are often pronounced laminal and possibly palatalized, though not in the vicinity of a uvular consonant. is normally pronounced with affrication, as.

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, 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 Stefan Georg's model of Southern Ket tone, which is also adapted by the more recent works on Ket and Yeniseian, the following can be inferred:

Tone name	First tone	Second tone	Third tone	Fourth tone	"Fifth tone"	"Sixth tone"
Tone contour
Example	сюль	сюʼль	сюуль	сюль	сюга	силюп

Orthography

In the 1930s a Latin-based alphabet was developed and used:
In the 1980s a new, Cyrillic-based, alphabet was created:

Cyrillic	Latin	IPA
А а	A a	a
Б б	B b	b
В в	V v
Г г	G g	,
Ӷ ӷ; Г̡ г̡		,
Д д	D d	d
Е е	E e	,
Ё ё	Ē ē	, jɔ
Ж ж	Ƶ ƶ
З з	Z z
И и	I i	i
Й й	Ī ī	j
К к	K k	k
Ӄ ӄ	Q q	q
Л л	L l; Ļ ļ	l; lʲ
М м	M m	m
Н н	N n; Ņ ņ	n; nʲ
Ӈ ӈ	Ŋ ŋ	ŋ
О о	O o	ɔ
Ө ө	Ō ō	o
П п	P p	p
Р р	R r	r; rʲ
С с	S s; Ș ș	s; sʲ
Т т	T t	t
У у	U u	u
Ф ф	F f	f
Х х	H h	,
Ц ц
Ч ч
Ш ш
Щ щ
Ъ ъ
ʼ
Ә ә	Ə ə
Ы ы	Ь ь	ɨ
Ь ь
Э э
Ю ю		u, ju
Я я		a, ja

Morphosyntax

Ket is classified as a synthetic language. Verbs use prefixes, while suffixes are rare; incorporation is well-developed. The basic word order is subject–object–verb.
Nouns have nominative basic case and a system of secondary cases for spatial relations. The three noun classes are: masculine, feminine and inanimate.
Unlike the neighbouring Siberian languages, Ket makes use of verbal prefixes. Ket has two verbal declensions, one prefixed with d- and one with b-. The second-person singular prefixes on intransitive verbs are.
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, wherein the incorporation is performed spontaneously for particular semantic and pragmatic effect.
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 does not affect the transitivity of the verb, while patient incorporation can make a transitive verb intransitive. Patient incorporation is usually used for patients that are wholly effected by an action ; more generally affected patients are typically incorporated only when significantly defocused or backgrounded.
Verbal incorporation, more specifically the incorporation of verbal infinitives 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.
Adjectival incorporation, with an incorporated adjective describing the target or final state of an action.
Adverbial incorporation, where a local adverb is used to describe the direction or path of a movement.

The division between morphemes is based on fusion. Sandhi are common as well. The name marking is of Ezāfe-type, the same as in predication.

Number

Ket has two grammatical numbers, the singular and plural. This is usually expressed by the presence or absence of -n or -ŋ, the plural suffixes. The old singulative suffix -s is present on certain singular forms, however, like the stem tɨˀs 'stone' > təˀŋ 'stones'. Some shape-classifying suffixes have developed and are mildly productive.

Noun declension

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	qīm-Ø	qīm-n-Ø
Genitive	qīm-di	qīm-n-di
Dative	qīm-diŋa	qīm-n-diŋa
Benefactive	qīm-dita	qīm-n-dita
Ablative	qīm-diŋal	qīm-n-diŋal
Adessive	qīm-diŋta	qīm-n-diŋta
Locative	-	-
Prosecutive	qīm-bes	qīm-n-bes
Instrumental	qīm-as	qīm-n-as
Abessive	qīm-an	qīm-n-an
Translative	qīm-esaŋ	qīm-n-esaŋ
Vocative	qīm-ə́	qīm-n-ə́

Lexicon

Loanwords

Ket has many loanwords from Russian, such as mora, 'sea'; there are also loanwords from other languages, such as Selkup: for example, the word qopta, 'ox', comes from the Selkup word qobda. Ket also has some Mongolian words, such as saˀj, 'tea', from Mongolian tsaj. There are also words from Evenki; for example, the word saˀl, 'tobacco', is probably borrowed from the Evenki word of the same meaning: sâr.

Sample text

Example sentences

Prefix positions in finite verbs are marked with superscript numerals for ease of inferring, where the superscript 0 marks the root morpheme and superscript 7 marks the verb incorporate position, as adapted from Vajda-Zinn, Georg and Kotorova-Nefedov. The following examples are adapted from Vajda-Zinn :

wikt:ден#Ket
* Дирен.
* Дърен.
wikt:катнь
* Боготнь.
* Уготнь.
**

The same verb root can be used in different configurations, using different verb incorporates for a variety of meanings:

wikt:ӄут
* Adding preverbal elements to the root morpheme:
** Дигагут.
** Дъгагут.
* Adding verb incorporates to the root morpheme:
** Аӈбагсют.
** Аӈигсют.
***

Literature

Kotorova, Elizaveta, and Andrey Nefedov . Comprehensive Ket Dictionary / Большой словарь кетского языка. Languages of the World/Dictionaries 57. Munich: Lincom Europa.