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Anthropological Linguistics: Perspectives from Africa
Edited by Andrea Hollington, Alice Mitchell and Nico Nassenstein
[Culture and Language Use 23] 2024
► pp. 49–82

Chapter 3
A cautious approach to spatial orientation in Tima

| University of Khartoum | University of Khartoum
| University of Cologne

This study investigates two subdomains within the semantic field of space among the Tima in Sudan: first, topology (and toponymy), and second, frames of reference. Like many European languages, Tima uses adpositions to indicate a goal/location and a source. Furthermore, Tima uses locative prefixes (remnants of a noun class system) to designate an area. With respect to frames of reference, we show that Tima uses a mixed system, availing of all major frames, i.e., absolute, intrinsic, and relative. The data at our disposal suggests that mobility as well as the shape of figure and ground play a role in the encoding of spatial relations in Tima, a hypothesis which needs testing with more data.

Keywords: spatial reference, Tima (Niger-Congo)
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background information on Tima
  • 3.Topology (and a glance at toponymy)
    • 3.1Locative prefixes
    • 3.2Prepositions
      • The source marker a=
      • The goal marker V=
    • 3.3Further spatial expressions
  • 4.Frames of reference
    • 4.1Absolute frame of reference
    • 4.2Intrinsic frame of reference
    • 4.3Relative frame of reference
  • 5.Conclusion and outlook
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 1 February 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/clu.23.03ala
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