Golin (also Gollum, Gumine) is a Papuan language of Papua New Guinea.
Golin | |
---|---|
Region | Gumine District, Simbu Province |
Native speakers | (50,000 cited 1981)[1] |
Latin | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | gvf |
Glottolog | goli1247 |
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.
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/.
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]
Golin is notable for having a small pronominal paradigm. There are two basic pronouns:[4]
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’: