Sursurunga is an
Oceanic language of
New Ireland.
Phonology
Consonants
* has two allophones: syllable initially and syllable finally.
* has two allophones: syllable initially and ~ syllable finally.
* has two allophones: syllable initially and ~~ syllable finally.
* Voiced stops , , and only occur syllable initially. Plain and prenasalized voiced stops (i.e., , , ) are in free variation word initially. Voiced stops are nasalized word-medially between vowels and after non-nasal consonants. , a "voiced alveolar slightly retroflexed stop" is also heard word medially.
* is syllable initially and finally.
* is a "voiceless vocoid occurring word finally following a voiced vocoid of the same quality."
* is syllable initially and syllable finally. It becomes after a rounded vowel.
* is initially and finally.
* Semivowels and only occur syllable initially.
Vowels
Orthography
Sursurunga has fifteen consonants and six vowels.
is the velar nasal and is the
schwa.
Number
Sursurunga is famous for having a five-way
grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a Feature (linguistics), feature of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement (linguistics), agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and many other ...
distinction. The numbers beside singular,
dual, and plural have been called
trial
In law, a trial is a coming together of parties to a dispute, to present information (in the form of evidence) in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to adjudicate claims or disputes. One form of tribunal is a court. The tribunal, w ...
and
quadral;
however, these numbers, which only occur on pronouns, indicate a minimum of three and four, not exactly three and four the way the dual indicates exactly two.
They are equivalent to "a few" and "several", and Corbett has called them ''(lesser)
paucal
In linguistics, grammatical number is a feature of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and many other languages present number categories of singula ...
'' and ''greater paucal.'' The trial cannot be used for
dyadic kinship terms, whereas the quadral is used for two or three such pair relationships.
Notes
References
*
*
*
{{Languages of Papua New Guinea
Languages of New Ireland Province
St George linkage