Ket

WALS coordinates: 64° N, 87° E

spoken in Russia

Alternative Names

Ethnologue:
Ruhlen:
  • Ket
Routledge:
  • Yenisey Ostyak
Other:
  • Yenisey Ostyak
ISO 639-3:

Features

Feature Value References
Phonology
Consonant Inventories Moderately small
Vowel Quality Inventories Large (7-14)
Consonant-Vowel Ratio Moderately low
Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives In plosives alone
Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems Both missing
Uvular Consonants Uvular stops only
Glottalized Consonants No glottalized consonants
Lateral Consonants Laterals, but no /l/, no obstruent laterals
The Velar Nasal No initial velar nasal
Vowel Nasalization Contrast absent
Front Rounded Vowels None
Syllable Structure Complex
Tone No tones
Absence of Common Consonants All present
Presence of Uncommon Consonants None
Morphology
Fusion of Selected Inflectional Formatives Exclusively concatenative
Exponence of Selected Inflectional Formatives No case
Inflectional Synthesis of the Verb 2-3 categories per word
Locus of Marking in the Clause Head marking
Locus of Marking in Possessive Noun Phrases Head marking
Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology Head-marking
Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology Weakly prefixing
Case Syncretism No syncretism
Syncretism in Verbal Person/Number Marking Syncretic
Nominal Categories
Number of Genders Three
Sex-based and Non-sex-based Gender Systems Sex-based
Systems of Gender Assignment Semantic
Coding of Nominal Plurality Plural suffix
Occurrence of Nominal Plurality All nouns, always obligatory
Plurality in Independent Personal Pronouns Person-number stem + nominal plural affix
Definite Articles No definite or indefinite article
Indefinite Articles No definite or indefinite article
Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Independent Pronouns No inclusive/exclusive
Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Verbal Inflection No inclusive/exclusive
Distance Contrasts in Demonstratives Three-way contrast
Pronominal and Adnominal Demonstratives Different inflection
Gender Distinctions in Independent Personal Pronouns No gender distinctions
Indefinite Pronouns Interrogative-based
Intensifiers and Reflexive Pronouns Differentiated
Person Marking on Adpositions Pronouns and nouns
Number of Cases 10 or more cases
Asymmetrical Case-Marking Symmetrical
Position of Case Affixes Case suffixes
Comitatives and Instrumentals Identity
Ordinal Numerals First/one-th, two-th, three-th
Distributive Numerals Marked by suffix
Position of Pronominal Possessive Affixes Possessive prefixes
Nominal Syntax
Obligatory Possessive Inflection Absent
Possessive Classification No possessive classification
Action Nominal Constructions Restricted
Noun Phrase Conjunction 'And' different from 'with'
Nominal and Verbal Conjunction Identity
Verbal Categories
Perfective/Imperfective Aspect Grammatical marking
The Past Tense No past tense
The Future Tense No inflectional future
The Perfect No perfect
Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes Tense-aspect prefixes
The Morphological Imperative Second singular and second plural
The Prohibitive Normal imperative + special negative
Imperative-Hortative Systems Neither type of system
The Optative Inflectional optative absent
Situational Possibility Verbal constructions
Epistemic Possibility Other
Overlap between Situational and Epistemic Modal Marking No overlap
Semantic Distinctions of Evidentiality No grammatical evidentials
Coding of Evidentiality No grammatical evidentials
Suppletion According to Tense and Aspect None
Verbal Number and Suppletion Singular-plural pairs, suppletion
Word Order
Order of Subject, Object and Verb SOV
Order of Subject and Verb SV
Order of Object and Verb OV
Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase Postpositions
Order of Genitive and Noun Genitive-Noun
Order of Adjective and Noun Adjective-Noun
Order of Demonstrative and Noun Demonstrative-Noun
Order of Numeral and Noun Numeral-Noun
Order of Degree Word and Adjective Degree word-Adjective
Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions Not initial interrogative phrase
Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase OV and Postpositions
Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adjective and Noun OV and AdjN
Simple Clauses
Alignment of Case Marking of Full Noun Phrases Neutral
Alignment of Case Marking of Pronouns Neutral
Alignment of Verbal Person Marking Active
Verbal Person Marking Both the A and P arguments
Third Person Zero of Verbal Person Marking No zero realization
Order of Person Markers on the Verb A precedes P
Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'Give' Double-object construction
Passive Constructions Present
Antipassive Constructions No antipassive
Applicative Constructions No applicative construction
Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions Morphological but no compound
Symmetric and Asymmetric Standard Negation Symmetric
Subtypes of Asymmetric Standard Negation Non-assignable
Negative Indefinite Pronouns and Predicate Negation Predicate negation also present
Polar Questions Question particle
Predicative Possession Locational
Predicative Adjectives Nonverbal encoding
Nominal and Locational Predication Different
Zero Copula for Predicate Nominals Impossible
Complex Sentences
'Want' Complement Subjects Subject is left implicit
Lexicon
Numeral Bases Decimal
M-T Pronouns No M-T pronouns
N-M Pronouns No N-M pronouns
Tea Others
Other
Para-Linguistic Usages of Clicks Other or none