Tima is one of the two languages in the Katla language family. It is spoken by the Tima people in Central Sudan.
Tima | |
---|---|
Lomorik, Tamanik, Yibwa | |
Di-murik | |
Native to | Sudan |
Region | Nuba Hills, Southern Kordofan |
Ethnicity | 5,000 Tima (2007) [1] |
Native speakers | 3,300 (2000) [2] |
Unwritten | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | tms |
Glottolog | tima1241 |
ELP | Tima |
Tima is classified as Severely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger |
The name of the language originates from one of the village's names in which Tima is spoken: tɨmmʌ. It is often used by people who live near to but are not part of the Tima-community and in linguistic contexts. From what is known about this name, there is no negative connotation to it.
While the name 'Tima' is often used, the native speakers refer to Tima as 'du-murik'.
Other names used for this language are Lomorik, Tamanik and Yibwa.
Tima is spoken mainly in a few villages in Central Sudan, in an area somewhere between the towns Katla and Lagawa, around the Jebel Hill in the Nuba Mountains. This area is said to have the most native speakers with around four-fifth of all Tima-speakers, though it is difficult to say if this given location is still completely accurate to this day. Native speakers call their living area 'lu-murik' and themselves 'i-murik' in plural form or 'ko-murik' in singular form.
Tima words are composed of multiple affixes. Noun-prefixes are used as an indicater of the according noun-classes and the quantity of the noun.
There is also a high number of suffixes which for example act as certain verb extensions.
Locative nouns (that are only used in singular forms here) use the Prefix 'li-'. This prefix indicades a location and is used for locatives nouns as well as for names of places.
As seen above, there are two different allomorphs possible for the prefix. The 'li-' prefix is the base form and the 'I-' is second form.
The base form only attaches to nominal roots that start with a consonant.
The second form is only attached to nominal roots that start with a vowel. Here the prefix vowel '-i-' disappears before the prefix is attached to the nominal root.
To indicate a location 'li-' can also attach to prepositions.
With the same purpose 'li-' can also attach to the third person singular and plural. It is known, that in spoken Tima this results in the expression: 'l(i)-yʌŋ' which means 'there is/are'.
There is also the proclitic locative marker 'ɪ-/i', which is used for another set of locative nouns. It is used for singular and plural nouns and is found in different types of Tima noun classes and stands before the singular or plural prefixes in the word structure. It considered to be a major locative marker.
singular | plural | |
---|---|---|
'i-kuh' | 'i- yuh' | =in the bone/s |
'ɪ-dɘla' | 'ɪ-ɪdɘla' | =on the roofs |
Another irregularity are locative markers with body part nouns. The locative marker 'i-' still exists, but additionally their numeral class prefix changes. The usual singular class prefix is replaced by the morpheme 'yV' and the usual plural prefix is replaced by the marker 'i-'.
This rules has several exceptions for example, nouns from the noun class 'c-' use the locative marker but keep their singular class prefix. But in plural they use the locative marker and change the plural marker from 'i-' to 'y-' to avoid using this vowel so often in a row.
singular | plural | |
---|---|---|
'ɪ-c-ɪɪ' | 'ɪ-y-ɪɪ' | =in the eye/s |
Other exceptions are body part nouns that belong to the 'ku-' singular class, some don't undergo any changes and others drop the locativ prefix 'i-' entirely.
To express the meaning of a location, the locative marker '(n)tV-' is used. In this case the marker differs depending on where the speaker is with regard to the location mentioned. Witch the use of this locative marker these nouns can undergo some morphonological changes.
Tima tenses fundamentally consists off of a non-future tense and a future tense. That is because Tima speakers mostly distinguish events by whether they already took place or if they will take place after the moment of speech.
Grammatically, the future tense has to be marked with a 'dV-' morpheme. The 'V' in this case stands for an underspecified vowel, which changes depending on the individual subject marker of the verb.
Furthermore, Tima distinguishes between definite future (recent future) and indefinite future (remote future). You can tell which one of the two is used, by looking at which subject person marker is used, which is located in the verb structure right before the future tense marker.
The indefinite future is used, when you want to say that an action will take place, but you do not know when yet. Grammatically this tense is marked with the usual futur/e tense morpheme 'dV-' plus an aspect marker 'cV-'.
Tima | Translation | |
---|---|---|
1SG | cɛ-n-dɛ-n- n-mɔɔk-dʌ iidi | I will drink water |
2SG | ca-da- mɔɔk-ŋaŋ iidi | you will drink water |
3SG | pɨnʌ cɘ-n-dɘ-n-məok iidi | he/she will drink water |
1PL.INCL | cɛ-di-mɔɔk-neey iidi | we will drink water |
1PL.EXCL | cɛ-di-mɔɔk -nin iidi | we will drink water |
2PL | ca-da-na-mɔɔk-nan iidi | you will drink water |
3PL | ihinʌ cɘ-n-dɘ-n- mɔɔk iidi | they will drink water |
When expressing something for the indefinite future, another combination of markers that is used are the imperfective aspect marker 'e-' plus the future marker 'dV-'. This first marker is only used for the indefinite future tense.
To emphasise the fact that indefinite future is in use, it is not unusual that adverbials are added.
The definite future is used, when said action will definitely take place shortly after the time of speech.
The usual future marker 'dV-' is used on the verb here, but unlike for the indefinite future, the imperfect aspect marker 'c-' is not used.
It is also possible to use the present tense when speaking of an action that will take place in the definite future. The context of the statement is very important in this case because it will explain that the definite future is meant, even if the present tense is used. In this case the future tense morpheme is no longer used. In order to highlight the habitual aspect, the adverb 'ʈɔʈɔk' can be added.
To emphasise the fact that definite future is in use, it is not unusual that adverbials are added.
There are also more variants of the definite future if it is used together with a specific mood category.
This tense is generally used for all situations which are not in the future, i.e. events that took place in the past, general events or ongoing events.
If you compare future and non-future verbs, there is no explicit marker for the non-future tense where the future marker 'dV-' would be, but instead there are subject markers to use on verbs, which differ for each non-future tense.
As said above, the Past tense is morphologically unmarked and can only be distinguished from other tenses by the subject marker. There is a proclitic marker though, which fuses with the person marker in the verb, which indicates the past tense:
This results in a morpheme which holds information both about the tense and the subject.
There is a differentiation between Recent Past and Remote Past, which will be elaborated below.
The Recent Past is a tense, used if said past event still somehow connects to the present time. To mark this tense, the past proclitic markers 'a-' (sg.) and 'i-' (pl.) are fused with a certain subject marker. The past marker hereby proceeds the person marker:
separate morphemes | portmanteau morpheme | |
---|---|---|
1SG | a+iŋ | ɛŋ |
2SG | a+a | aa |
3SG | a+ŋ | aŋ |
1PL.INCL | a+i | ɛɛ |
1PL.EXCL | a+i | ɛɛ |
2PL | a i | ɛ |
3PL | a ŋ | aŋ |
Which results in sentences like this, e.g.:
To emphasize the connection between past and present time in this tense, either adverbs are frequently used or a certain aspect marker '-ataŋ' is added at the end of the verb-root.
The Remote Past or General past describes an action that took place a long time ago from the moment of speech. As in the recent past, the past tense proclitic marker is also fused with a subject marker but with a different one than for the recent past.
Depending on the sentence structure, the 1sg subject proclitic marker either is 'uŋ-' (SVO) or 'iŋ-' (OSV).
Other irregularities exist in combination with the ergative case. Here the person marker 'nʌ' is used, but can change depending on the verb and its consonant at the beginning of the verb root.
This tense is used for describing an action that is happening during the moment of speech, i.e. for describing something progressive or habitual.
The progressive ‘cV-‘ marker is used here, but its form is dependent on the subject markers of each verb. This results in sentence being both interpretable as progressive or habitual.
For describing a procedure or express a generic sentence, the progressive marker falls away completely and only subject marker and verb-root are being used.
The counting system in Tima language works with two different bound prefixes.
An exception to this system is the number 1. It is marked by the prefix 'a-/ʌ-'.
For the numbers 2 to 10 the prefix 'ɪ-/i-' is used and it markes the singularity of those numbers.
The following numbers from 11 to 19 have there names from a combination of the names from the numbers 1 to 9 plus the prefix 't̪a-'. This most likely works as an indication that the number is „from 10 onward“ or just works as a „plus“.
base numeral | +10 | × 10 | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | a-tɪɪn | 11 | ta-tɪɪn | 10 | ɪ-hɪdakʊn | ||
2 | ɪ-hɪɪk | 12 | ta-hɪɪk | 20 | i-hʌdʌkun ɪhɪɪk | ||
3 | ɪ-hwaay | 13 | ta-hwaay | 30 | i-hʌdʌkun ɪhwaay | ||
4 | ɪ-halɘm | 14 | ta-halɘm | 40 | i-hʌdʌkun ɪhalɘm | ||
5 | i-duliin | 15 | ta-duliin | 50 | i-hʌdʌku idulii | ||
6 | ɪ-nt̪ɘdakwalɔɔŋ | 16 | ta-nt̪ɘdakwalɔɔŋ | 60 | i-hʌdʌku int̪ɘdakwalɔɔ | ||
7 | ɪ-ntatɪŋɛɛl | 17 | ta-ntatɪŋɛɛl | 70 | i-hʌdʌku intatɪŋɛɛ | ||
8 | ɪ-nt̪ɪŋɛrɛɛy | 18 | ta-nt̪ɪŋɛrɛɛy | 80 | i-hʌdʌku int̪ɪŋɛrɛɛ | ||
9 | ɪ-nt̪ahʌdʌkun | 19 | ta-nt̪ahʌdʌkun | 90 | i-hʌdʌku int̪ahʌdʌku | ||
10 | ɪ-hɪdakʊn | 20 | i-hʌdʌkun ɪhɪɪk | 100 | i-hʌdʌku ihʌdʌku |
Southern or South Sámi is the southwesternmost of the Sámi languages, and is spoken in Norway and Sweden. It is an endangered language; the strongholds of Southern Sámi are the Norwegian municipalities of Snåsa, Røyrvik, Røros, and Hattfjelldal. Out of an ethnic population of approximately two thousand, only about five hundred still speak the language fluently. Southern Sámi belongs to the Saamic group within the Uralic language family.
Crow is a Missouri Valley Siouan language spoken primarily by the Crow Nation in present-day southeastern Montana. The word Apsáalooke translates to "Children of the Large Beaked Bird", which was later incorrectly translated into English as 'Crow'. It is one of the larger populations of American Indian languages with 4,160 speakers according to the 2015 US Census.
Neo-Mandaic, also known as Modern Mandaic, sometimes called the "ratna", is the modern reflex of the Mandaic language, the liturgical language of the Mandaean religious community of Iraq and Iran. Although severely endangered, it survives today as the first language of a small number of Mandaeans in Iran and in the Mandaean diaspora. All Neo-Mandaic speakers are multilingual in the languages of their neighbors, Arabic and Persian, and the influence of these languages upon the grammar of Neo-Mandaic is considerable, particularly in the lexicon and the morphology of the noun. Nevertheless, Neo-Mandaic is more conservative even in these regards than most other Neo-Aramaic languages.
The Elgeyo language, or Kalenjin proper, are a dialect cluster of the Kalenjin branch of the Nilotic language family.
Much of Tamil grammar is extensively described in the oldest available grammar book for Tamil, the Tolkāppiyam. Modern Tamil writing is largely based on the 13th century grammar Naṉṉūl, which restated and clarified the rules of the Tolkāppiyam with some modifications.
The grammar of Classical Nahuatl is agglutinative, head-marking, and makes extensive use of compounding, noun incorporation and derivation. That is, it can add many different prefixes and suffixes to a root until very long words are formed. Very long verbal forms or nouns created by incorporation, and accumulation of prefixes are common in literary works. New words can thus be easily created.
Tsimshian, known by its speakers as Sm'álgyax, is a dialect of the Tsimshian language spoken in northwestern British Columbia and southeastern Alaska. Sm'algyax means literally "real or true language."
This article summarizes grammar in the Hawaiian language.
The Nukak language is a language of uncertain classification, perhaps part of the macrofamily Puinave-Maku. It is very closely related to Kakwa.
Dirasha is a member of the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family. It is spoken in the Omo region of Ethiopia, in the hills west of Lake Chamo, around the town of Gidole.
In linguistic morphology, inflection is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and definiteness. The inflection of verbs is called conjugation, while the inflection of nouns, adjectives, adverbs, etc. can be called declension.
Zero-marking in English is the indication of a particular grammatical function by the absence of any morpheme. The most common types of zero-marking in English involve zero articles, zero relative pronouns, and zero subordinating conjunctions. Examples are I like cats in which the absence of the definite article, the, signals cats to be an indefinite reference, whose specific identity is not known to the listener; that's the cat I saw in which the relative clause (that) I saw omits the implied relative pronoun, that, which would otherwise be the object of the clause's verb; and I wish you were here. in which the dependent clause, (that) you were here, omits the subordinating conjunction, that.
The grammar of the Otomi language displays a mixture of elements of synthetic and analytic structures. Particularly the phrase-level morphology is synthetic, whereas the sentence-level is analytic. Simultaneously, the language is head-marking in terms of its verbal morphology, but not in its nominal morphology, which is more analytic. Otomi recognizes three large open word classes of nouns, verbs, and particles. There is a small closed class of property words, variously analyzed as adjectives or stative verbs.
Moro is a Kordofanian language spoken in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan, Sudan. It is part of the Western group of West Central Heiban Kordofonian languages and belongs to the Niger-Congo phylum. In 1982 there were an estimated 30,000 Moro-speakers. This was before the second Sudan civil war and therefore the recent number of speakers might differ. There can be noted an influence of Arabic and it is suspected that today approximately a fourth of all Moro vocabulary has a relation or an origin in the Arabic language.
Marra, sometimes formerly spelt Mara, is an Australian Aboriginal language, traditionally spoken on an area of the Gulf of Carpentaria coast in the Northern Territory around the Roper, Towns and Limmen Bight Rivers. Marra is now an endangered language. The most recent survey was in 1991; at that time, there were only 15 speakers, all elderly. Most Marra people now speak Kriol as their main language. The remaining elderly Marra speakers live in the Aboriginal communities of Ngukurr, Numbulwar, Borroloola and Minyerri.
Mehek is a Tama language spoken by about 6300 people in a somewhat mountainous area along the southern base of the Torricelli Mountains in northwestern Papua New Guinea. Mehek is spoken in six villages of Sandaun Province: Nuku, Yiminum, Mansuku, Yifkindu, Wilwil, and Kafle. Mehek is most closely related to Pahi, with 51% lexical similarity, and spoken approximately 20 kilometers to the southwest. Mehek is a fairly typical Papuan language, being verb-final, having a relatively simple phonology, and agglutinative morphology. There is very little published information about Mehek. The literacy rate in Tok Pisin, spoken by nearly everyone, is 50-75%. Mehek is not written, so there is no literacy in Mehek. Tok Pisin is primarily used in the schools, with 50% children attending. There is also a sign language used by the large number of deaf people in the Mehek community.
Mungbam is a Southern Bantoid language of the Lower Fungom region of Cameroon. It is traditionally classified as a Western Beboid language, but the language family is disputed. Good et al. uses a more accurate name, the 'Yemne-Kimbi group,' but proposes the term 'Beboid.'
Turkmen grammar is the grammar of the Turkmen language, whose dialectal variants are spoken in Turkmenistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Russia, China, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and others. Turkmen grammar, as described in this article, is the grammar of standard Turkmen as spoken and written by Turkmen people in Turkmenistan.
Levantine Arabic grammar is the set of rules by which Levantine Arabic creates statements, questions and commands. In many respects, it is quite similar to that of the other vernacular Arabic varieties.
Ubykh was a polysynthetic language with a high degree of agglutination that had an ergative-absolutive alignment.