17.202, Review: Lang Description: Vajda (2004)

[LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-17-202. Sat Jan 21 2006. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 17.202, Review: Lang Description: Vajda (2004)

Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Wayne State U <aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry at linguistlist.org>
 
Reviews (reviews at linguistlist.org) 
        Sheila Dooley, U of Arizona  
        Terry Langendoen, U of Arizona  

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org/

The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University, Wayne
State University, and donations from subscribers and publishers.

Editor for this issue: Lindsay Butler <lindsay at linguistlist.org>
================================================================  

What follows is a review or discussion note contributed to our 
Book Discussion Forum. We expect discussions to be informal and 
interactive; and the author of the book discussed is cordially 
invited to join in. If you are interested in leading a book 
discussion, look for books announced on LINGUIST as "available 
for review." Then contact Sheila Dooley at dooley at linguistlist.org. 

===========================Directory==============================  

1)
Date: 20-Jan-2006
From: Ruth Singer < r.singer at pgrad.unimelb.edu.au >
Subject: Ket 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2006 19:45:32
From: Ruth Singer < r.singer at pgrad.unimelb.edu.au >
Subject: Ket     
 

AUTHOR: Vajda, Edward J.
TITLE: Ket
SERIES: Languages of the World/Materials 204
PUBLISHER: Lincom GmbH
YEAR: 2004
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-2677.html 

Ruth Singer and Sebastian Fedden, Department of Linguistics and Applied 
Linguistics, University of Melbourne.

INTRODUCTION

The book summarises Vajda's work on tone and verb morphology in Ket 
which has been published elsewhere in various forms. It is a grammar 
based on Vajda's own field work together with research by other scholars 
that was largely published in Russian and German. Vajda states that the 
main purpose of the book is to make research on Ket more widely 
accessible. This hundred-page book is bound to be useful to typologists or 
anyone else with an interest in Ket. 

THE KET LANGUAGE

Ket is the last remaining language of the Yeniseic language family. A few 
hundred speakers of three different dialects live in north-central Siberia. 
Ket is a clear isolate, as there are no strong similarities between the 
Yeniseic lexicon, phonology or syntax and those of surrounding Eurasian 
languages. Throughout the book, Vajda points out correspondences 
between Ket and Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit language family but he notes 
that he is still gathering the evidence to present a strong case for a genetic 
relationship. Some notable typological features of Ket are the three-way 
noun class distinction between masculine animate, feminine animate and 
inanimate classes. These classes are only partially semantically transparent. 
There are five tones in Ket but interestingly tones are not found in other 
Siberian languages. The verb is polysynthetic with ten position slots. There 
are five different strategies used to encode subject/object agreement and 
the strategy used is lexically specified for each verb. 

The book is divided into three main sections: phonology, morphology and 
syntax. The chapter on Ket phonology comprises only nine pages and Vajda 
himself calls it a phonological sketch of the language. The section on verb 
morphology accounts for one third of the book. There is also an 
introduction with background information on Ket and Vajda's research. The 
book concludes with a short account of the lexicon and a text. This review 
discusses the sections on phonology and the section on verb morphology 
in detail and does not cover the sections on simple and complex clauses, 
nominal morphology or noun phrases. The discussion of Ket phonology 
was written by Sebastian Fedden and the discussion of Ket verb 
morphology was written by Ruth Singer.

DESCRIPTION

Phonology
The phonology chapter falls into two main parts of roughly equal 
proportions. In the first half of the chapter, Vajda deals with the segmental 
phonology of Ket. He gives a succinct account of the set of segmental 
phonemes and the phonological processes they are involved in for the 
three dialects Southern Ket (SK), Northern Ket (NK), and Central Ket (CK). 
The section also provides information on phonotactic restrictions and 
syllabifcation of cluster-final sonorants and liquids. The second half is 
dedicated to suprasegmental features of Ket, namely word-tone and other 
prosodic phenomena at and beyond the phrase level. In this section, Vajda 
analyses Ket as a word-tone language, i.e. a language in which the word 
rather than the syllable is the relevant domain for tone assignment. On this 
analysis, Ket has five distinctive tonemes: glottalized rising, falling, high-
even, rising/falling, and rising/high falling, which extend over the first or -- 
in the case of the latter two -- the first two syllables of the phonological 
word. Diachronically, most tonemes can be traced back to lost or reduced 
consonantal elements in syllable-final clusters. All five contrastive pitch 
contours are illustrated by diagrams which give the traces of fundamental 
frequencies for relevant tokens. A short list of examples of minimal tone 
pairs support the tonal analysis proposed by Vajda. The phonology chapter 
is rounded off by a short account of how Russian loan words are treated 
phonologically in Ket. 

Verb morphology
Ket verb morphology is very complex which has led to the development of 
many different analyses. The account of Ket verb morphology in this book 
is very similar to that in Vajda (2003), although there are more examples in 
this book. Two aspects of Ket verb morphology are particularly unusual. 
The syntactic alignment of Ket verbs is lexically specified - different verbs 
mark their core arguments in different ways. Argument agreement may also 
be lexicalised in which case it no longer gives a true reflection of the 
arguments present. 

Ket is of interest to typology in that it lacks a single type of syntactic 
alignment. Vajda divides Ket verbs into five distinct conjugation classes 
which are defined according to agreement strategy and the form of the 
TAM morphemes. Each of the agreement patterns instantiates a different 
type of syntactic alignment. For example, one conjugation class uses a 
classic split-subject system; some intransitive subjects are cross-referenced 
using the same strategy as for as transitive subjects while others are cross-
referenced by the same strategy as transitive objects. Another conjugation 
class uses a straightforward ergative/absolutive system. The third 
conjugation class uses a nominative/accusative system. The other two 
conjugation classes use more unusual systems. Unlike most systems of verb 
conjugation classes, the Ket system is not exhaustive. Some verbs cannot 
be classified as having a conjugation type. These verbs include weather 
verbs that have an inherent weather subject such as 'rain' or 'snow' and lack 
agreement altogether. These cannot be categorised as belonging to any 
particular conjugation class.

The verbal agreement strategy is lexically specified for Ket verbs. In 
addition, the exact form that agreement takes is partly lexicalised for some 
verbs. The morphemes in slots P1, P3 and P8 which typically function as 
third person agreement morphemes are lexically specified for some verbs. 
These morphemes no longer show agreement that corresponds to any 
syntactic argument. Vajda calls these morphemes 'pseudo-actant markers'. 
For example, in the absolutive (ergative/absolutive) conjugation the 
morpheme da in P8 position usually indicates that the verb has a third 
person transitive subject of feminine or inanimate noun class. However, a 
small group of verbs have no argument that corresponds to this agreement 
morpheme. These include verbs with meanings such as 'turn 
yellow', 'broken' and 'slip'. These verbs have a single core participant which 
is cross-referenced as an absolutive. The transitive subject marker has 
become lexicalised in these verbs and is effectively a dummy argument. 

The lexicalisation of verbal argument-agreement morphology is found in 
various unrelated languages (see for example Evans 2004; Frantz 1995; 
Harvey 2002; Singer (forthcoming). Lexicalised agreement is yet another 
link between Ket and the Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit languages as lexicalised 
agreement is also found in Athabaskan languages (Givón and Bommelyn 
2000; Young et al. 1992). There are strong parallels between the meanings 
of verbs with lexicalised agreement in Ket and those in other languages. In 
Ket as elsewhere lexicalisation of agreement is restricted to third person 
agreement. There a set of verbs with pseudo-actant markers which Vajda 
describes separately as 'inversional verbs'. Most have intransitive stems and 
a few such as 'I got sleepy (lit: sleep took me inside)' can have an external 
nominal that corresponds to the dummy argument (in this case the noun 
for 'sleep'). The inversional verbs encode their sentient experiencer as non-
subject (absolutive or inactive) and usually have a dummy subject. The 
inversional verbs are similar to those described as experiencer-object verbs 
in Iwaidjan languages (Evans 2004).

EVALUATION

Phonology
It is the strength of Vajda's analysis that some phonological processes for 
consonants, such as sonorant devoicing, and the segmental and 
suprasegmental features of vowels, i.e. vowel allophony, differences in 
vowel quantity and voice quality (glottal or neutral), are entirely predictable 
from the tonal contour of a syllable. This economical analysis gives a very 
neat and consistent picture of Ket phonology. Furthermore, the description 
of segmental allophony and tonemes is not confined to SK but includes 
information on NK and CK as well. However, for the reader's orientation, it 
would have been helpful to include a chart which gives an overview of all 
segmental phonemes, their allophones, and the segmental and 
suprasegmental contexts which determine allophony. Also, the posited 
segmental phonemes are not substantiated by minimal pairs.

The analysis of Ket as having prosodic word-tone is plausible because in 
mono- and disyllabic words tonal melodies contrast at the level of the word 
and not the syllable (examples are almost exclusively nouns). It is not the 
case that each syllable is allowed to bear a distinctive tone independent of 
the other syllables in the word. The glottalized and the falling toneme occur 
on monosyllables, the high-even toneme occurs on monosyllables but 
allows some spreading to excrescent vowels in following syllables. The 
rising/falling and rising/high falling tonemes, however, normally occupy 
two consecutive syllables. Both of these tonemes can also appear on words 
which surfaces as a monosyllable with a geminate vowel due to intervocalic 
consonant deletion in a (underlyingly) disyllabic word, which is mainly a 
feature of fast speech.  

However, there is a major difference between Ket as a word-tone language 
and typical word-tone languages, such as Shanghai, Mende (Sierra Leone) 
and many Papuan languages (e.g. Kairi, Golin). In these languages tone is 
lexically specified for roots. Tonal melodies are taken out of their respective 
lexical entries as unpredictable information pertaining to a lexeme. In Ket, 
on the other hand, one of the five tonemes is assigned to the first or the 
first two syllables of a phonological word. Some toneless subject agreement 
prefixes obviously fall outside the domain of tone assignment. As the Ket 
verb is heavily prefixal, a verbal root is often quite far from the point where 
tone is assigned to the phonological verbal word. If tone is purely prosodic 
in Ket and is associated after the whole word has been assembled by the 
morphology, how does the language know what tone it has to use? If tone 
is lexical, why is it that roots in polysyllabic words normally do not bear any 
tone? Answers to these questions would have been welcome.

In polysyllabic words, i.e. in the verbal vocabulary, which unfortunately is 
hardly considered in the phonology chapter (but the reader can find many 
examples in the chapter on verb morphology), the tone situation is 
different from the nominal vocabulary in other respects as well. The tones 
which appear on verbs are almost exclusively the rising/falling and the 
rising/high falling ones. It would have been interesting to know in how far 
verbal and nominal tone differ. Also, it does not become quite clear what 
the tonal specification for those syllables are which do not carry any of the 
five tonemes because they happen to lie outside the first or the first two 
syllables of a word, a very common situation in polysyllabic verbs.

Moreover, sometimes a phonological verbal word seems to bear more than 
one toneme (maybe because an incorporated element retains its tone?) 
though one would probably not want to treat the verb as consisting of two 
distinct phonological words. I am aware that detailed information on tone is 
probably not the first priority for most readers of the book nor would it be 
feasible to include such details in a phonological sketch, but I would have 
liked more on tonal behavior in complex words, that is nominal compounds 
and especially the verb.

Verb morphology
Vajda describes the categorisation of Ket verbs into five conjugations as his 
major contribution to Ket studies. He argues that each verb is lexically 
specified for conjugation class, which is based on verbal agreement 
strategy and TAM morphology. Vajda's analysis seems to have been well 
received by others working on Ket. The main problem with the conjugation-
class analysis is that it separates what we would want to categorise as a 
single verb on the basis of semantics and lexical morpheme distribution 
into separate lexical items.  The lexical morphemes of Ket verbs are found 
in the P0 and P7 slots. However many verbs which have the same lexical 
morphemes and the same basic meaning are classified as separate lexical 
items in Vajda's analysis because they differ in conjugation class. These 
include verbs related as causatives, inceptives, resultatives, reflexives, 
reciprocals and infinitives. An example of three forms classified as separate 
verbs because of their different conjugation classes is given below. 
(Examples are from Vajda (2005); see Vajda's publications for abbreviations 
and descriptions of the position slots marked by suffixed numerals.) Note 
that all three verbs have the same lexical morphemes in their P0 and P7 
slots. 

Coreferential absolutive conjugation: quick trip
dígdàvatsaq 
di8-igda7-ba6-t5-(s)-aq0
1SJ8-to.the.riverbank7-1S.RS6-SU5-go0
'I go to the river for a few hours and come back.'

Active conjugation: medium trip
dígdàksaq
di8-igda7-k5-(s)-aq0
1SJ8-to.the.riverbank7-ADES5-go0
'I go to the river for a few days and return.'

Coreferential inactive conjugation: long trip
dígdàddaq
di8-igda7-a4-di1-daq0 
1SJ8-to.the.riverbank7-D4-1S.RS1-go0 
'I go to the riverbank and remain there.'

Vajda's analysis creates a split between verb meaning and lexical 
morphemes on the one hand and agreement strategy on the other. No 
doubt this is a necessary step along the path to understanding Ket verb 
morphology. However, it is hard to see how this system of verb 
classification alone will provide much insight into the semantic and 
syntactic properties of Ket verb roots. It is not actually clear whether Vajda 
believes that the concept of 'verb root' is useful for describing Ket verbs. 
The use of lexical morphemes to construct meaning is briefly discussed on 
page 61 but this is a very interesting topic that deserves further research. It 
would be interesting to see how productively lexical morphemes can 
combine and how Ket verbs with two lexical morphemes compare with 
complex verbs in other languages. Ultimately it seems that it will be 
necessary to set up a number of cross-cutting verb categorisations, one of 
which is based on verbal agreement strategy. It is likely that 
correspondences between the classes set up by these categorisations will 
emerge. Vajda greatly emphasises the independence of conjugation class 
and verb meaning. He describes the five conjugation classes as simply 
formal groupings with no semantic basis. However, the fifth conjugation 
group, the 'possessive conjugation' clearly has a semantic basis. The verbs 
in this group all refer to events portrayed ''as a spontaneous occurrence 
(which it may not actually be)'' (2004:58) and most refer to the production 
of sounds such as whistling or clapping. In addition, those verbs which fall 
outside of the conjugation class system as all their arguments are internal 
also form semantic groupings, such as weather verbs.

The discussion of pseudo-actant markers is very brief. Given that this is a 
relatively unknown phenomenon it would have been interesting to know 
more about it. In particular, the extent to which those uses described 
as 'productive' occur and examples of all uses described as 'nonproductive'.

CONCLUSION

Vajda gives a concise account of both the segmental and the 
suprasegmental phonology of Ket. His analysis is economical and 
convincing. Tonal analysis is plausible and supported by phonetic data and 
minimal tone pairs. More information on tone in complex words would 
have been desirable to fully appreciate the complexity of the language's 
tonal phonology. The summary of Ket verb morphology in this book will be 
a great resource for typologists because of the many interesting questions 
Ket raises. Vajda's analysis of Ket verb morphology demonstrates that not 
all languages can be said to have a single syntactic alignment. The question 
of what constitutes a single verb or verb root in Ket is also of importance to 
typology. If verbs are categorised according to conjugation class then each 
verb has its own syntactic alignment. If verbs are categorised according 
their lexical morphemes, a single verb can have different syntactic 
alignments. The discussion of pseudo-actant markers is tantalising and 
there are comments throughout the section on verb morphology showing 
that it has become lexicalised in different ways. Lexicalisation of agreement 
and other aspects of verb morphology is yet another parallel between Ket 
and Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit languages.

REFERENCES

Evans, Nicholas. 2004. Experiencer objects in Iwaidjan languages 
(Australia). Non-nominative subjects, ed. by Peri Bhaskararao and Karumuri 
Venkata, 77-100. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Frantz, Donald G. 1995. Southern Tiwa argument structure. Grammatical 
relations: Theoretical approaches to empirical questions, ed. by Clifford S. 
Burgess, Katarzyna Dziwirek and Donna Gerdts, 75-98. Stanford: CSLI.

Givón, T. and Bommelyn, Loren. 2000. The evolution of de-transitive voice 
in Tolowa Athabaskan. Studies in Language, 24.41-76.

Harvey, Mark. 2002. A Grammar of Gaagudju. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Singer, Ruth. (forthcoming). Agreement in Mawng, PhD thesis, Linguistics 
and Applied Linguistics, University of Melbourne.

Vajda, Edward J. 2003. Ket verb structure in typological perspective. 
Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung (Language Typology and 
Universals), 26.55-92.

Vajda, Edward J. 2005. Distinguishing referential from grammatical function 
in morphological typology. Linguistic diversity and language theories, ed. 
by Zygmunt Frajzyngier, David S. Rood and Adam Hodges, 397-420. 
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Young, Robert W., Morgan, William and Midgette, Sally. 1992. Analytical 
lexicon of Navajo. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWERS

Ruth Singer is currently completing a thesis which is a description of the 
Australian language Mawng, with a focus on the different functions of 
verbal agreement morphology. She is also interested in the typology of 
lexicalised agreement, inclusory constructions and complex predicates.


Sebastian Fedden is working on a descriptive grammar of the Papuan 
language Mian as a thesis. His main interests are in word tone and nominal 
classification systems.





-----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-17-202