This articleshould specify the language of its non-English content using{{lang}} or{{langx}},{{transliteration}} for transliterated languages, and{{IPA}} for phonetic transcriptions, with an appropriateISO 639 code. Wikipedia'smultilingual support templates may also be used - notablyket for Ket.See why.(January 2025)
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.[2] A 2005 census reported 485 native speakers, but this number is suspected to be inflated.[5] According to a local news source, the number of remaining Ket speakers is around 10 to 20.[6] Another Yeniseian language,Yugh, became extinct in the 1970s.[7][8]
The earliest observations about the language were published byPeter Simon Pallas in 1788 in a travel diary (Путешествия по разным провинциям Русского Государства,Puteshestviya po raznim provintsiyam Russkogo Gosudarstva). During the 19th century, the Ket were mistaken for a tribe of the Finno-UgricKhanty. A. Karger in 1934 published the first grammar (Кетский языкKetskij jazyk), as well as a Ket primer (Букварь на кетском языкеBukvar' na ketskom jazyke), and a new treatment appeared in 1968, written by A. Kreinovich.
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.[9] 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.[10] There are no known monolingual speakers as of 2006.[11] A children's book,A Bit Lost by Chris Haughton, was translated into the language in 2013.[12]Alexander Kotusov was a Ket folk singer and poet who died in 2019.[13][14]
Only three localities, Kellog,Surgutikha andMaduika, retain a native Ket-speaking population in the present day. Other villages such asSerkovo andPakulikha weredestroyed in the second half of the 20th century, dispersing the local Ket population to nearby towns.[15]
Ket has three dialects: Southern (Upper Imbat), Central and Northern (collectively Lower Imbat). 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.[16]
The three remaining Ket-majority localities natively speak different dialects. Southern Ket is spoken inKellog, Central Ket inSurgutikha and Northern Ket inMaduika.[15]
There is muchallophony, 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 pronouncedlaminal and possiblypalatalized, though not in the vicinity of a uvular consonant./q/ is normally pronounced with affrication, as[𐞥χ].
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 atonal language is debatable,[19] although recent works by Ket specialists Edward Vajda and Stefan Georg defend the existence of tone.[20]
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:[21][failed verification]
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.[22]
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Nouns havenominative basic case (subjects and direct objects) 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 withd- and one withb-. Thesecond-person singular prefixes on intransitive verbs are[ku-,ɡu-].
Ket makes significant use ofincorporation. 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.[25]
Forms of incorporation include:
Nominal incorporation, most commonly used to describe theinstrumental part of an action, but sometimes used to describepatients instead. Instrumental incorporation does not affect thetransitivity 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 atransitive verbintransitive. 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.[26]
Verbal incorporation, more specifically the incorporation of verbalinfinitives (rather than roots) into the verb complex. This form of incorporation is used to signifyaspect and formcausatives. Incorporated infinitives may bring incorporated elements of their own into the verb as well.[27]
Adjectival incorporation, with an incorporated adjective describing the target or final state of an action.[28]
Adverbial incorporation, where a local adverb is used to describe the direction or path of a movement.[29]
Ket has twogrammatical numbers, the singular and plural. This is usually expressed by the presence or absence of-n (individuated plural) or-ŋ (collective plural), the plural suffixes. The old singulative suffix-s is present on certain singular forms, however, like the stemtɨˀs 'stone' >təˀŋ 'stones'. Some shape-classifying suffixes have developed and are mildlyproductive.[31]
Ket has many loanwords from Russian, such asmora, 'sea'; there are also loanwords from other languages, such asSelkup: for example, the wordqopta, 'ox', comes from the Selkup wordqobda. Ket also has someMongolian words, such assaˀj, 'tea', from Mongoliantsaj. There are also words fromEvenki; for example, the wordsaˀl, 'tobacco', is probably borrowed from the Evenki word of the same meaning:sâr.[32]
They went to hunt squirrels, leaving their son at home.
They came home in the evening, ate the squirrel heads themselves, leaving only the squirrel paws for their son.
Their son cried, he does not eat squirrel paws.
His parents went to bed at night.
He cried the whole night.
The old woman Dotam came, cut her son's belly in half, pulled out the intestines, put them in the fire, and ate her son.
The parents got up in the morning.
There was no rustle of their son.
The old woman Dotam ate him.
The old man said: "Old woman!
Take [=bring] the spear home."
The old woman took the spear home.
The old man sharpened the spear.
He went to Dotam the old woman.
He struck the old woman Dotam with a spear.
He broke the old woman's head and returned home himself.
A little later, the old woman's daughter Dotam came to the old woman and said: "Give me some maramsanka [grass], my mother has a headache, my mother has passed away."
The old man got angry and killed the old woman's daughter with the spear of the old woman Dotam.
The old man went and killed the old woman Dotam completely.
The old man stayed with the old woman Dotam.
The old man said to the old woman Dotam: "Come with me to eat, then you can eat me."
The old man Dotet went into the forest with the old man.
He chopped some wood chips from a tree, put them in a cauldron, poured water, made a fire, and boiled the cauldron.
He said to the old man Dotet: "Uncle, look how the cauldron is boiling!"
Old man Dotet looked and looked some more.
The old man took the cauldron and poured the hot cauldron on old man Dotet.
Karger, N. K. (1934).Кетский язык. — Языки и письменность народов Севера. Vol. Ч. III. Moscow, Leningrad.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Kotorova, Elizaveta, and Andrey Nefedov (eds.) (2015).Comprehensive Ket Dictionary / Большой словарь кетского языка (2 vols). Languages of the World/Dictionaries (LW/D) 57. Munich: Lincom Europa.
Kreinovich, E. A. (1968).Кетский язык. — Языки народов СССР. Т. V., Leningrad.
Vajda, Edward J. (2000).Ket Prosodic Phonology. Languages of the World. Vol. 15. Munich: Lincom Europa.
Vajda, Edward J. (2004).Ket. Languages of the World. Munich: Lincom Europa.ISBN3-89586-221-5.
Vajda, 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.; Potter, B. (2010). "Siberian Link with Na-Dene LanguagesThe Dene–Yeniseian Connection".Anthropological Papers of the University of Alaska, new series. Vol. 5. Fairbanks:University of Alaska Fairbanks, Department of Anthropology. pp. 33–99.
Nefedov, Andrey (2023). "Ket". In Behnke, Anja; Wagner-Nagy, Beáta (eds.).Clause Linkage in the Languages of the Ob-Yenisei Area. Empirical Approaches to Linguistic Theory. Vol. 23. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. pp. 209–247.doi:10.1163/9789004684775_006.ISBN978-90-04-68477-5.