Golin language

Golin
RegionGumine District, Simbu Province
Native speakers
(50,000 cited 1981)
Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3gvf
Glottologgoli1247
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Golin (also Gollum, Gumine) is a Papuan language of Papua New Guinea.

Phonology

Vowels

Front Back
High ɪ ɪː ʊ ʊː
Mid ɛ ɛː ɔ ɔː
Low ɑ ɑː

Diphthongs that occur are /ɑi ɑu ɔi ui/. The consonants /l n/ can also be syllabic.

Consonant

Bilabial Alveolar Palatal Velar
plain lab. plain Late. plain lab.
Nasal m n
Stop voiceless
/voiced		 p
b
(bʷ)		 t
d		 k
ɡ
(gʷ)
Fricative s~ʃ ɬ~
l
Approximant j w
Trill r

/bʷ ɡʷ/ are treated as single consonants by Bunn & Bunn (1970), but as combinations of /b/ + /w/, /ɡ/ + /w/ by Evans et al. (2005).

Two consonants appear to allow free variation in their realisations: [s] varies with [ʃ], and [l] with [ɬ].

/n/ assimilates to [ŋ] before /k/ and /ɡ/.

Tone

Golin is a tonal language, distinguishing high ([˧˥]), mid ([˨˧]), and low ([˨˩]) tone. The high tone is marked by an acute accent and the low tone by a grave accent, while the mid tone is left unmarked. Examples:

Pronouns

Golin is notable for having a small pronominal paradigm. There are two basic pronouns:

There is no number distinction and no true third person pronoun. Third person pronouns in Golin are in fact compounds derived from 'man' plus inín 'self':

References

  1. ↑ Golin at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed access icon
  2. ↑
    • Bunn, Gordon; Bunn, Ruth (1970). "Golin phonology". Pacific Linguistics A. 23: 1–7.
  3. 1 2 Evans, Nicholas; Besold, Jutta; Stoakes, Hywel; Lee, Alan (2005). Materials on Golin: Grammar, texts and dictionary. Parkville: The Dept. Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, The University of Melbourne.
  4. ↑ Foley, William A. (2018). "The morphosyntactic typology of Papuan languages". In Palmer, Bill (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide. The World of Linguistics. Vol. 4. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 895–938. ISBN 978-3-11-028642-7.