POSSESSIVE PREDICATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS IN KET (CORPUS-DRIVEN RESEARCH)
The main means of expression of possessive predicativity in Ket are constructions with adessive case. Despite the fact that the leading researchers in the field of the Ket studies mention this construction, until now there is no individual papers devoted to the subject under research. By way of syntactic expressing the relationships of belonging the Ket language refers to the esselanguages. In the Ket language there is no verb ‘to have’, in possessive predicative constructions are used zero-encoding and two existential predicate copulas: the first – for the present (usam), the second – for the past time (obɨlde). The order of words in possessive predicative constructions is fixed: the possessor – the possessed – the predicative. Deviations from this order of words are attributed to the actual sentence division. The strategy of predicative possessiveness expression in the Ket language can be referred to the locative type as in the constructions with the meaning of possession the locative case is used: adessive case. The forms of this case are -daŋta / -diŋta / -naŋta, and the case name indicates that it marks the animate objects. The most frequent are possessive predicative constructions with zero-encoding (17 occurrences), half this quantity less there are the constructions with the predicate copula obɨlde (8 occurrences), more than half this quantity less there are the negative constructions (7 occurrences) and the constructions with usam (6 occurrences). The quantitative data in the calculation of existential constructions with usam and obɨlde and locative constructions with adessive case, which do not express the meaning of belonging, show that they occur in isolated contexts. Thus, there is reason to believe that in the Ket language adessive case focuses on the expression of possessive relations in predicative constructions. Existential predicate copulas usam and obɨlde are likely to be more recent innovation, and are possibly formed under the influence of the Russian language.
Keywords: Ket, possessive predicative constructions, adessive, locative constructions, existential constructions
References:
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Issue: 4, 2016
Series of issue: Issue 4
Rubric: LINGUISTICS
Pages: 22 — 36
Downloads: 955