Disjunction in Ket

Abstract

We explore how disjunction is expressed in Ket, an understudied and highly endangered Yeniseian language of Siberia. We show that Ket has multiple strategies of disjunction, which share morphological resources with indefinites and which differ in their scope-taking properties. We present a preliminary analysis and discuss the broader typology, showing that while Ket’s system of disjunction resembles those of Sinhala (Indic; Sri Lanka) and Tiwa (Tibeto-Burman; India), it differs from these systems in several respects. We conclude that multiple disjunction strategies appear to be widespread, but show significant variation, and require additional investigation cross-linguistically.