Golin language

Golin
Region	Gumine District, Simbu Province
Native speakers	unknown (51,000 cited 1981)[1]
Language family	Trans–New Guinea Chimbu–Wahgi Chimbu Golin
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	gvf
Glottolog	goli1247[2]

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~ ɬ
Approximant						j		w
Trill				r

/bʷ ɡʷ/ are treated as single consonants by Bunn & Bunn (1970), but as combinations of /b/ + /w/, /ɡ/ + /w/ by Evans et al. (2005).

Two consonants appear to allow free variation in their realisations: [s] varies with [ʃ], and [l] with [l].

/n/ assimilates to [ŋ] before /k/ and /ɡ/.

Tone

Golin is a tonal language, distinguishing high, mid, and low tone.

References

1. Golin at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Golin". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

• Bunn, Gordon; Bunn, Ruth (1970). "Golin phonology". Pacific Linguistics A 23: 1–7.
• Bunn, Gordon (1974). "Golin grammar". Working Papers in New Guinea Linguistics 5.
• Evans, Nicholas; et al. (2005). Materials on Golin: Grammar, texts and dictionary. Parkville: The Dept. Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, The University of Melbourne.