Golin language

"Golin" redirects here. For other uses, see Golin (disambiguation).

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]
Language family	Trans–New Guinea Chimbu–Wahgi Chimbu Golin
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	gvf
Glottolog	goli1247
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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. 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'