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
Diphthong
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, 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 the speech ...
s that occur are . The consonants can also be
syllabic.
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 verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emph ...
, 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:
* 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