Article

Name: Typological features of expressing semantic components of location event in the Ket language: а structural-semantic analysis of non-verbal predicates

Authors: S. S. Butorin

Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Novosibirsk, Russian Federation; Novosibirsk State Technical University, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

In the section Linguistics

Abstract: The basic structural features and spatial semantics of the patterns expressing a static location event by means of non-verbal location predicates in the Ket language (a Yeniseian isolate) have been analyzed. The non-verbal predicate is understood in the sense formulated by Kees Hengeveld [Hengeveld, Kees. Non-verbal Predication. Theory, Typology, Diachrony. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin – New York, 1992]. The Ket system of non-verbal predicates includes the following predicate types: substantive, substantive-postpositional, pronominal, pronominalpostpositional, and adverbial predicates as well as predicates expressed by descriptive phrases headed by certain spatial nouns. The predicate types are identified taking into account the part-ofspeech and functional character of non-verbal predicate heads. As a result of the analysis of the predicates under study, it has been concluded that two coding strategies are used: a personal predicative strategy (a major morphological tool) and a nonpersonal predicative strategy (a minor morphological tool). The former employs suffixes of the ди/ду paradigmatic suffix series coordinating the subject and the predicate in person, class (gender) in the third person singular (masculine, feminine and neuter) and the third person plural (animate/ inanimate) and number (singular/plural) and the latter makes use of the suffix coordinating the subject and the predicate in number: с’ in singular and c’=ин in plural. Each type of non-verbal predicates has been described from the structural and semantic points of view. It has been shown that the structure and semantics of substantive-postpositional and pronominal- postpositional predicates have a compositional nature. The spatial semantics is expressed as follows: nouns or pronouns express a landmark, a postposition stem specifies a topological landmark area (upper, lower, front or back areas, etc.), the essive (locative and adessive) case formants mark a location. The substantive predicate has a non-compositional semantic nature: it does not specify a topological landmark area. It has been noted that adverbial predicates have either a «vague» spatial location identification or a deictic one.

Keywords: ket language, spatial event, non-verbal predicate, structural and semantic types of non-verbal location predicates, typological features

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