Language contact and areal convergence in North Asia

Abstract

Ket is the sole surviving member of the Yeniseian language family, spoken in the central part of North Asia. This large territory is also home to other language families: Samoyedic, Ob-Ugric, Tungusic, and Turkic. Apart from Yeniseian, which are strikingly unique, all language groups in the area conform to a common typological profile. Subsequent to contact over several hundred years, many of the core grammatical features that distinguish Yeniseian from the other language families have undergone a ‘typological accommodation,’ a phenomenon most prominent in Modern Ket, to mimic the dominant language type in the area. The present article aims to provide an overview of some ways in which typological accommodation has affected the phonemic tones and nominal and verbal morphology in Modern Ket, and to show that this peculiar phenomenon is also attested at the syntactic level in formation of adverbial and relative clauses. As such, the paper presents that the phonemic and morphological structures of Modern Ket uniquely position the language for discourse and communication. Here, its speakers deploy these communicative devices, specifically designed followed extended contact with other languages, as representative of their language community.