Golin (also Gollum, Gumine) is a
Papuan language
The Papuan languages are the non-Austronesian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands in Indonesia, Solomon Islands, and East Timor. It is a strictly geographical grouping, and does not imply a ...
of
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...
.
Phonology
Vowels
Diphthong
A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...
s that occur are . The consonants can also be
syllabic
A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...
.
Consonant
are treated as single consonants by Bunn & Bunn (1970),
[*
] but as combinations of + , + by Evans et al. (2005).
Two consonants appear to allow
free variation
In linguistics, free variation is the phenomenon of two (or more) sounds or forms appearing in the same environment without a change in meaning and without being considered incorrect by native speakers.
Sociolinguists argue that describing such ...
in their realisations: varies with , and with .
assimilates to before and .
Tone
Golin is a
tonal language
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All oral languages use pitch to express emotional and other para-linguistic information and to convey emphasi ...
, distinguishing high (
§Ë¥, mid (
¨Ë§, and low (
¨Ë© 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:
* High: mú
u˧˥'type of snake'; wÃ
i˧˥'scream (man)'
* Mid: mu
u˨˧'type of bamboo'; wi
i˨˧'coming from the same ethnic group'
* Low: mù
u˨˩'sound of river'; wì
i˨˩'cut (verb)'
Pronouns
Golin is notable for having a small pronominal paradigm. There are two basic pronouns:
*''ná'' first person
*''Ã'' second person
There is no number distinction and no true third person pronoun. Third person pronouns in Golin are in fact compounds derived from 'man' plus ''inÃn'' 'self':
*yalÃni 'he' < ''yál'' 'man' + ''inÃn'' 'self'
*abalÃni 'she' < ''abál'' 'woman' + ''inÃn'' 'self'
References
*
{{Chimbu–Wahgi languages
Chimbu–Wahgi languages
Languages of Simbu Province
Tonal languages
Subject–object–verb languages