ABSTRACT
This is the sole remaining representative of the Yeniseian group of languages located in Siberia, the other members of which – Arin, Assan and Kott – died out in the early nineteenth century; the closely related Yugh – considered by some to have been a dialect of Ket – is recently extinct. The Kets live along the middle reaches of the Yenisei in the Krasnoyarsk Region, and number less than a thousand. In several ways - e.g. in its class system of nouns, the presence of internal flection and the extraordinary complication of the verbal system – Ket is quite unlike any other Siberian language; indeed, until recently it appeared to be unrelated to any other known living language. Some analysts, however, now see links with the Na-Dene family of North American languages, though this hypothesis is far from universally accepted.
