THE NUMBERS PEOPLE PLAY WITH: NUMERALS IN THE CONTEXT OF VERBAL CREATIVITY OF THE KETS
Not only in modern research on indigenous languages, but also in the national languages with centuries-old traditions until recently there are contradictory opinions on formation of the numeral class into a content word. A wide diversity and variety of forms is noticed, deviations from the inflections are noticed. Besides, in understudied languages a variety of forms for the same numerals beyond the limit of the first ten is observed. The article is devoted to the functions, which cardinal numerals from 1 through 7 take in folklore and household texts and how the numerals are objectified in linguistic worldimage of the Kets. Material of the Ket folklore and household texts corpus, consisting of 30 texts (about 1100 sentences) served as a basis for this research. The numerals’ etymology is not covered by the report (see Werner, 2006 as per etymology). The numerals from 1 through 7 can be noticed in the Ket texts very often: qoˀk (AN) / qūsʲ (INAN) ‘one’ – 15 cases of use; ɨ̄n ‘two’ – 15 cases of use; doˀŋ ‘tree’ – 9 cases of use; sīk ‘four’ – 9 cases of use; qāk ‘five’ – 5 cases of use; ā ‘six’ – 3 cases of use; oˀn ‘seven’ – 2 cases of use. Besides reflecting the exact quantitative characteristic, the numerals perform some other functions: the numeral qoˀk (AN) / qūsʲ (INAN) ‘one’ is used as an indefinite article; ɨ̄n ‘two’ and doˀŋ ‘three’ can be noticed in word combinations with the word deˀŋ ‘people’ and acquire a cumulative meaning ‘twain’, ‘threesome’; sīk ‘four’ and qāk ‘five’ can be observed in a complex substantivized combination. All the numerals can be a part of an attribute. There is a cumulative context consisting of 6 elements in one text. The even numerals have a connection with evil spirits: ɨnˈitaŋ – ‘two-teeth’ (Kajgus’); sektaɣantuːsʲa ‘four-fingered’ (Kolbasam); ˀasʲɨk qoj ‘six year old bear’ (in the fairy tale it struggles with the main character’s grandmother). The odd numerals are closely connected with the world-view of the Kets, their cosmogonical ideas and their customs. The world, according to visualization of the Kets consists of three parts – the upper world, consisting of seven layers; the middle world, washed by seven seas; the lower world, which consists of seven subsoil caves. According to the Ket’s beliefs a man has seven souls, one of them is the main. The odd numerals can often be noticed in rituals, e.g. marriage: during the third meeting, the fiancée’s relatives agree to the marriage, after the marriage, the bride should live at her parent’s tent for three days. The fact that the cardinal numerals from 1 through 7 can be found in the texts often, is defined by the needs of the language speakers, their cultural and cosmogonic concepts of the world.
Keywords: the Ket language, cardinal numerals 1 through 7, functioning of the numerals in folklore texts, sacral meaning of numbers
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Issue: 3, 2014
Series of issue: Issue № 1
Rubric: LINGUISTICS
Pages: 9 — 16
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