A Closer Look at Barxáw Spatial Prepositions

I have already provided some Barxáw prepositions, but I have not described in any closer detail the use of these. In addition, Barxáw has a bunch of pronouns / anaphoric adverbs that basically fuse 'there, that' or 'here, this' with the meaning of the prepositions.

sún ~ on

sit ~ in 

However, things are sún one's hand, not sit one's hand. Similar things go with regards  to cups, ships, etc. However, a glove is not on a hand, it is tùð that hand.

This is due to the thought model that sún, sit and tùð are selected through.

The hand has a primary surface (the palm), likewise a boat has a primary surface (the deck or the inside of the hull), a house has a primary surface (the roof), a town has a primary surface (its land area), a country likewise, a mountain likewise. Being enclosed by, covered by, or on top of the primary surface calls for sún. Thus, the drink is sún kahið, on the glass.

The primary surfaces can be somewhat odd - for a wall, the primary surface is really anything cut into the wall or on top of the wall - thus anything that is not a vertical surface. The vertical surface is an un-primary surface with regards to walls. Thus, a door is sún gahké, 'on the wall', as is a window. A painting is sit gahké, 'in the wall'.

As for the glove, its primary surface is analogous to that of the hand - viz the palm on the outside. As the primary surface is not the inside, the glove is seen as surrounding the hand and therefore tùð is used. The hand is sit the glove.

For most large things, the primary surface is basically the topmost outside surface (which can be rather large). This is less often true of smaller things, but often enough to be a good inference. Culturally significant things, however, often have lexically determined primary surfaces, and whenever one is in contact with that surface, sún is used, and sit is used for most other types of relation to the surfaces of a thing. Finally, tùð is used for certain situations where only part of a thing is covered, but no primary surface is involved with regards to the object of the preposition. Since the hand only is part of the human, the hand in the glove is a hand tùð the glove. An item hidden in the glove would be sit the glove.

Edit: inspired by Salmoneus' Rawang Ata - Prepositions