Recordings of Tikar: A South Bantoid language of Niger-Congo
Sanaga river. Photo by Gladys Guarisma, 1997. Click on image to access collection.
| Language | Tikar |
| Depositor | Alexandre François, Gladys Guarisma |
| Affiliation | CNRS |
| Location | Cameroon |
| Collection ID | 0592 |
| Grant ID | LMG0001 |
| Funding Body | ELDP |
| Collection Status | Collection online |
| Landing Page Handle | http://hdl.handle.net/2196/65d23fbd-5453-42d8-a3af-ae340ec37388 |
Summary of the collection
Gladys Guarisma (CNRS-LACITO) conducted fieldwork on Tikar, a South Bantoid language of Cameroon. The archive includes six audio recordings, totalling 3 hours 51 minutes (11 Wav files).
Group represented
Tikar country covers three departments: Mbam, Nagambé-Tikar district (SE, including Nditam and Kong villages); Mbam-et-Djerem (NE, south Bankim district) , Noun (NW, Magba). The most important chiefdoms are those of Bamkin, Ngambé and Nditam. Their closest neighbors are the Bamoun (O), the Mambila (N), the Kondja (N-E), the Vouté or Babute and the speakers of the Āsəm (A61) (E). The Tikar number between 18 and 20,000 (Stanley 1986). Most of the inhabitants of the Tikar Plain are agriculturalists. They mainly grow maize, cassava, coffee and peanuts. In addition, they raise goats, sheep and chickens. Most are Christianized, and live in harmony with the neighbouring animist or Muslim minorities.
Language information
The Tikar language belongs to the large Niger-Congo family. It was initially viewed as an isolated language by Westermann & Bryan (1952, 125–126), who described it as a class language with unclear rules of agreement, with two main dialects.
Later on, Tikar was classified as one of the branches of South Bantoid. The work of Pascale Piron (1997) helped confirm the phylogenetic status of Tikar, and its place within the Bantoid group.
Collection contents
The archive includes six audio recordings, totalling 3 hours 20 minutes (10 Wav files). Gladys Guarisma used the linguistic questionnaire developed by CNRS-LACITO (Bouquiaux and Thomas 1987: 275-292), including word lists, and a sentence-based questionnaire.
Collection history
The researcher Gladys Guarisma conducted her fieldwork surveys in April–May 1997, in four different villages: Nditam, Ngoumé, Ngambé and Kong.
Acknowledgement and citation
Users of the Tikar collection should acknowledge Gladys Guarisma from CNRS–LaCiTO as the principal investigator and the data collector. Alexandre François was in charge of coordinating the collection, in the broader framework of LAVAFLoW (Legacy audio video archival in fourteen languages of the world).
The digital audio recordings were made possible through the financial support of CNRS–LaCiTO. The ELDP funding helped our research assistant Ms Anne Armand prepare the archive for online display.
To refer to any data from the collection, please cite as follows:
Guarisma, Gladys. 2020. Recordings of Tikar: A South Bantoid language of Niger-Congo. Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/00-0000-0000-0013-E13D-F. Accessed on [insert date here].
