Word order variations and information structure in Ket: A corpus-based study

• Applicant: Dr. Andrey Nefedov, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
• Term: from 2017 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 390565735

Ket is a highly endangered language spoken in Central Siberia, the last surviving member of the Yeniseian language family. It is known to be rather radically different from all the other Siberian languages as well as hard to pigeonhole within a single typological account. The main goal of the proposed project is to provide a detailed analysis and description of word order variations and information structure in Ket, based on an electronic corpus of the language. As of yet, this particular area of grammar has received little attention in the existing literature on Ket. Moreover, despite a considerable number of available Ket text materials accommodated over the last 50 years, the absolute majority of them lack any glossing and are not available in any electronic form, let alone in the form of an electronic, machine-searchable corpus that could help perform this kind of research. This project seeks to change the situation by creating the first electronic corpus of Ket, richly annotated with various kinds of information (morphological, syntactic, sociolinguistic, etc.). The corpus will integrate both published and unpublished Ket text data spanning the period from the late 30s of the 20th century to the present day. Coupled with fieldwork, it will help to provide a comprehensive description and analysis of word order and information structure in the language. It is, however, urgent to carry out these activities as soon as possible, while there are still competent speakers of Ket who can help to complete these tasks.Therefore, the proposed project is meant not only to fill the existing gaps in the description of Ket grammar, but also to benefit both the language and academic communities with an important asset in the form of an open-access corpus. It is sure to help encourage and greatly facilitate future studies of Ket, before this unique language disappears completely.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants