A multi-media documentation of verbal communication among the Tima (Sudan)
Supervisor
Prof. Dr. Gerrit J. Dimmendaal (University of Cologne)
Participants
Dr. Abdelrahim Mugaddam (head Dept. of Linguistics, University of Khartoum); Suzan Alamin (University of Khartoum), Abeer Bashir (University of Khartoum), Dr. Gertrud Schneider-Blum (University of Cologne) and Meikal Mumin (University of Cologne)
Duration of the project
August 2006 – June 2009 · The project is sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation program on endangered languages
Description
The main purpose of the project is to document Tima, a Niger-Congo language spoken by a small community in the Nuba Mountains of north-central Sudan. Apart from a documentation plus annotation of the linguistic corpus, the investigation of non-verbal communication will be an important research topic.
One central aim is to cover a wide range of local genre types such as narrative as well as procedural discourse, dialogues and songs. The collected data should enable Mrs. Abeer Bashir and Mrs. Suzan Alamin to analyse the phonetic/phonological system of the language on the one side and the morphological structure of words on the other side. Since the texts will not only be audio-taped but also video-taped, the same data will also provide a basis for an examination of the non-verbal aspects of communication.
Dr. Abdelrahim Mugaddam is responsible for the sociolinguistic aspects of the project. He will investigate the extent of multilingualism in the Tima community; more specifically, he will clarify in which domains Tima is preferred to Arabic or other languages.
An important outcome of the project will be a multi-media dictionary. Here Tima words and sentences will be translated into the national language Arabic and into English. The aim is to link an audio-file to each entry in the dictionary, so that the proper pronunciation can be demonstrated. Furthermore, many photographs (e.g. of the material culture) will be taken in order to illustrate a more vivid image of the life of the Tima people. The flexible structure of the database program allows for a permanent extension of the lexicon, ideally by members of the Tima community. One further aim is provide community members with a proper training in the use of databases and lexicography, so that they themselves can continue the documentation project after the present project has come to an end.
Institut für Afrikanistik · Kontakt und Öffnungszeiten · Impressum
ama22 [at] uni-koeln [dot] de (Webteam Afrikanistik) · Letzte Änderung: 18.06.09