| Voice marking | Proper marker | no | |
| Voice marking | Lookalike marker | yes | Voice lookalikes:
Partitive bound morpheme [us] ‘a little bit’: When the bound morpheme [us] ‘a little bit’ is incorporated in a verb, the object loses the index on a verb. Hence, [us] incorporation has detransitivization effects, at least at the level of P indexation (Vajda 2015: 655).
Action verbs containing the incorporate [us] meaning 'a bit' (@partitive meaning) combine features of both transitive and intransitive coding patterns: they contain two unmarked arguments but lack verb internal indexing for the object. Though these verbs are syntactically transitive, they represent a type of morphological intransitive (Vajda 2015: 655).
|
| Voice marking | Synthetic marker | n/a | |
| Voice marking | Analytical marker | n/a | |
| Flagging | S-argument flagging | no | The Ket nominative codes the sentential subject and the sentential object (the patient of transitive clauses) (Georg 2007: 105).
Georg (2007: 102): NOM -Ø.
Alongside the absence of any morphological marking to distinguish the subject from the direct object, there is a range of postposed bound relation morphemes, most conveying spatial meanings (Vajda 2015: 631).
|
| Flagging | P-oblique flagging | no | |
| Flagging | P-oblique unflagging | yes | Partitive bound morpheme [us] ‘a little bit’: When the bound morpheme [us] ‘a little bit’ is incorporated in a verb, the object loses the index on a verb. Hence, [us] incorporation has detransitivization effects, at least at the level of P indexation (Vajda 2015: 655).
Action verbs containing the incorporate [us] meaning 'a bit' (@partitive meaning) combine features of both transitive and intransitive coding patterns: they contain two unmarked arguments but lack verb internal indexing for the object. Though these verbs are syntactically transitive, they represent a type of morphological intransitive (Vajda 2015: 655).
|
| Flagging | P-oblique flagging variation | n/a | |
| Indexation | S-argument indexed | yes | There are five productive intransitive agreement classes and a residue of unproductive types (Vajda 2015: 632).
IN1 (intransitive class 1): This is the most frequent and semantically wide-ranging morphological type of intransitive. IN1 verbs nearly always have an animate-class subject and express a wide range of meanings (Vajda 2015: 633).
IN2 (intransitive class 2): Verbs of this class mark both animate-class and inanimate-class subjects in P6 (Vajda 2015: 634).
IN3 (intransitive class 3): Only three of the basic verbs in the database reflect this pattern (get scared, blink, look at), which require multi-site subject marking in P8/P-1 and P6. It includes, predictably, all reflexives and reciprocals derived based on Transitive Class (Vajda 2015: 634).
IN4 (intransitive class 4): Only four basic verbs in the database (roll, fall, sit down, appear) exemplify this pattern, which requires multi-site subject marking in P8 and P1 but omits the P-1 suffix for animate plural subjects (Vajda 2015: 635).
IN5 (intransitive class 5): This class contains a single subject marker in the P4–1 zone – third-person animate in P4, third-person inanimate in P3, or first-/second person in P1 (Vajda 2015: 635). |
| Indexation | S-argument indexation conditioned | no | |
| P-individuation properties | Incorporated P is generic (non-specific) | yes | (N)oun incorporation typically answers questions like "What are you occupied with, what are you doing all day" and not when the question is focussed on a possible patient ("What is it you are making /producing at this moment") (Georg 2007: 236). |
| P-individuation properties | Incorporated P is indefinite (non-specific) | no | |
| P-individuation properties | Incorporated P can be referential | no | (N)oun incorporation typically answers questions like "What are you occupied with, what are you doing all day" and not when the question is focussed on a possible patient ("What is it you are making /producing at this moment") (Georg 2007: 236). |
| P-individuation properties | Oblique is generic (non-specific) | no | |
| P-individuation properties | Oblique is indefinite (non-specific) | no | |
| P-individuation properties | Oblique can be referential | yes | The curious feature of object-incorporating bases in Ket is their ability to incorporate the bound morpheme us ‘a little bit’ to express that the action only involved a part of the object (Vajda 2015: 654).
|
| P-individuation properties | Eliminated P is generic (non-specific) | yes | BITE
Ket (Yeniseian; Valentina Romanenkova, Southern Ket speaker, born 1946, elicited by Edward Vajda, May 17, 2023)
a.
Ūk tīˑp de’ŋ da=hɯld-aŋ-a.
Your dog people she=bites-them
‘Your dog bites people’
b.
Ūk tīˑp da=araŋɢoɣavet
Your dog she=bites
‘Your dog bites.’
intransitive stem, ‘SBJ is prone to biting’, can’t be used with an object
BUT: For concepts like ‘killing’ and ‘attacking’ you have to use a transitive verb. To get the meaning ‘does it in general / prone to doing it’ with such verbs you have to add an anonymous object de’ŋ ‘people’ or assen ‘animals’, or whatever(p.c. Edward Vajda, May 17, 2023) |
| P-individuation properties | Eliminated P is indefinite (non-specific) | yes | HUNT
Ket (Yeniseian; Valentina Romanenkova, Southern Ket speaker, born 1946, elicited by Edward Vajda, May 17, 2023)
De’ŋ d-assʌnnoɣavet-in
people they hunt
‘People engage in hunting.’
Intransitive stem, ‘SBJ hunts’, can’t be used with an object to say exactly what they hunt. To add what people hunt, you incorporate the animal word into the verb (p.c. Edward Vajda, May 17, 2023).
|
| P-individuation properties | Eliminated P can be referential | no | Anaphoric interpretation (excluded):
FYI: While an object noun phrase can be dropped from the verb clause in discourse, its presence remains indexed by the logically appropriate agreement marker verb internally. There are no morphologically distinct deobjective forms in Ket (Vajda 2015: 653). @FYI: deobjective understood as verb-coded alternation.
FYI: Subject and object noun phrases are often dropped to background referents in discourse, and the basic SOV word order can be varied to convey other nuances of information structure (Vajda 2015: 630). |
| Oblique affectedness | Less affected oblique | yes | Ability to incorporate the bound morpheme [us] ‘a little bit’ to express that the action only involved a part of the object (Vajda 2015: 654).
|
| P-constraining properties | Animacy constrains oblique demotion | yes | FYI: Verbs with the partitive incorporate [us] meaning 'a little bit'. The morpheme is used in place of an object marker to trigger the partitive meaning. All the provided examples contain either an inanimate object (e.g. water, bread) or an animate object (e.g. elk) (KJ).
|
| P-constraining properties | Person constrains oblique demotion | no | |
| P-constraining properties | Number constrains oblique demotion | no | |