9 Excite Your Senses: Glances into the Field of Perception and Cognition in Tima

Abstract

Tima has approximately 6,000 speakers, most of whom live in the Nuba Mountains in Sudan. This chapter presents some background information on the language and grammatical issues prerequisite to a proper understanding of the examples in the discussion on perception and cognition in Tima. Then, it focuses on the domain of perception and cognition. For a better understanding of the examples, it explains the following morphological phenomena: transitivity, pluractionality, instrumental and antipassive marking. In addition, it provides some information on telicity as well as on the tense/aspect system, the constituent order and the lexicon. The chapter also summarizes the verbs discussed and shows which Tima verbs convey a clear perceptional/concrete meaning, which verbs have a pure cognitive meaning, and which verbs oscillate between the two domains. The chapter presents a closer look into the verbs of perception and cognition with regard to derivational properties and valency. Keywords:antipassive marking; cognition; instrumental marking; perception; pluractionality; Tima; Tima lexicon; transitivity