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),[2] but as combinations of /b/ + /w/, /ɡ/ + /w/ by Evans et al. (2005).[3]
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:[3]
- High: mú [mu˧˥] 'type of snake'; wí [wi˧˥] 'scream (man)'
- Mid: mu [mu˨˧] 'type of bamboo'; wi [wi˨˧] 'coming from the same ethnic group'
- Low: mù [mu˨˩] 'sound of river'; wì [wi˨˩] 'cut (verb)'
Pronouns
Golin is notable for having a small pronominal paradigm. There are two basic pronouns:[4]
- ná first person
- í 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 inín ‘self’:
- yalíni ‘he’ < yál ‘man’ + inín ‘self’
- abalíni ‘she’ < abál ‘woman’ + inín ‘self’
References
- ^ Golin at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
- ^ *Bunn, Gordon; Bunn, Ruth (1970). "Golin phonology". Pacific Linguistics A. 23: 1–7.
- ^ a b 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.
- ^ 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.
- Bunn, Gordon (1974). "Golin grammar". Working Papers in New Guinea Linguistics. 5.
Recent Comments