Article

Name: General description of non-verbal locative predicates in the Ket language

Authors: S. S. Butorin

Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

In the section Linguistics

Abstract: The paper presents the results of the studies concerned with the analysis of non-verbal predicates in the Ket language. The paper deals with the static locative constructions describing the location of the object localized. The notion of the non-verbal predicate as understood by Kees Hengeveld is proposed to be applied to the Ket material. The structure and semantics of non-verbal predicates are described. These predicates are assumed to be the secondary forms of expressing the localizer since they occupy the position of the predicate which is not characteristic of the localizer. The principal means of marking non-verbal predicates which involve personal and non-personal predicative suffixes are considered. The personal-predicative markers are analyzed and evidence in favour of interpreting them as an «inflectional» copula is given. The classification of the structural types of non-verbal locative predicates has been accomplished. As a result, the personal-predicative and non-personal-predicative predicates have been identified. The former are represented by substantive, substantive-postpositional, pronominal, pronominal-postpositional, adverbial predicates as well as some spatial nouns, and the latter – only by substantive-postpositional predicates.

Keywords: ket language, locative situation of location, non-verbal predicate, predicative coding, «inflectional» copula, structural types of non-verbal predicates

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