Golin (also Gollum, Gumine) is a
Papuan language
The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian and non-Australian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands, by around 4 million people. It is a strictly geogra ...
of
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
.
Phonology
Vowels
Diphthongs that occur are . The consonants can also be
syllabic
Syllabic may refer to:
*Syllable, a unit of speech sound, considered the building block of words
**Syllabic consonant, a consonant that forms the nucleus of a syllable
*Syllabary, writing system using symbols for syllables
*Abugida, writing system ...
.
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 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 verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emph ...
, 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. In fact, 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