Golin language

Golin
Golin
Region	Gumine District, Simbu Province
Native speakers	(50,000 cited 1981)
Language family	Trans–New Guinea Chimbu–Wahgi Chimbu Golin; ; ;
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	gvf
Glottolog	goli1247
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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.	Palatal	plain	lab.
Nasal		m		n
Stop	voiceless /voiced	p b	(bʷ)	t d			k ɡ	(gʷ)
Fricative				s~ʃ	ɬ~ l
Approximant					ɬ~ l	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'

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.

[e25-1] Golin at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)

[Bunns-2] *Bunn, Gordon; Bunn, Ruth (1970). "Golin phonology". Pacific Linguistics A. 23: 1–7.

[Evans-3] 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-Typology-4] 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.

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