Location of a situation in time space and ti

54 ‘I just told you that my husband, he has gone to go and see his traps.’ Nkoe 4.10 5 Summary and conclusions In this paper, the meanings of three Mpyemo prepositions to, ri, and ti have been analysed according to the methodology of cognitive linguistics. The preposition to functions quite distinctively from the other two, in that it alone invokes its LM as a container. The PPs with to can occur in clauses with a wide variety of verbs, both motion and non-motion. The prepositions ri and ti both invoke their LM with regard to its boundary, and in this respect their meanings are strongly distinguished from that of to. As far as the relationship between them is concerned, ri and ti are almost in complementary distribution with semantic environments. Details of this complementary distribution are: 1. While ri+LM PPs are found in clauses with a wide variety of verbs, including motion verbs, non-motion action verbs, the copula and the verb ‘have’, ti+LM PPs can only occur in clauses which describe a situation localised over a boundary. 2. ri marks aspect in the TAM systems of verb, while ti marks immediate past tense. 3. ti is used to introduce certain adverbial clauses but ri is never used to introduce clauses of any kind. A cognitive linguistic analysis has enabled us to gain an understanding of the meanings of these three prepositions, which meanings would never have been revealed by traditional English translations. In fact, it was often found that such translations were very misleading. Table 1 provides a summary of the results of the total analysis. Each column of this table gives the information on the functions of one of the prepositions. In the lower rows of the table, starting immediately below the blank row about a third of the way down, there is a listing of each of the functions of each preposition. The numbers within parentheses that appear at the end of each entry in this listing are the numbers of subsections within the paper where the corresponding function is dealt with in detail. biɛ bi- ɛ NC8- POSS bipɔndɔ bi- pɔndɔ NC8 trap bɛɛ bɛɛ see kɛ kɛ go kɛ kɛ go áá áá 3sg PERF , gɔ gɔ SUB am am 1sg POSS ngwom ngwom husband , nɛ nɛ thattowith wɔ wɔ 2sg OBJ laɛ laɛ tell ti ti IMM PST Mɛ mɛ 1sg PST