Sinaugoro is an Austronesian language of Papua New Guinea. It is mainly spoken in the Rigo District of Central Province by some 15,000 people.[2] The language is closely related to Motu.
Phonology
Consonants
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | lab. | |||||
| Plosive | voiceless | t | k | kʷ | ||
| voiced | b | d | ɡ | ɡʷ | ||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | |||
| voiced | v | (ʝ) | ɣ | ɣʷ | ||
| Nasal | m | n | ||||
| Rhotic | r | |||||
| Approximant | l | (j) | ||||
- /i/ is heard as a glide [j] when in word-initial position before a vowel, or within a syllable or syllable-initial onset.
- /ɣ/ is heard as palatal [ʝ] when before front vowels.[3]
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | u | |
| Mid | e | o | |
| Low | a |
- Sounds /e, o/ are heard as [ɛ, ɔ] when in stressed syllables, or when the nucleus of the following syllable is /a/ or /o/.[3]
Writing system
| a | b | d | e | f | g | ḡ | ḡw | i | k | kw | l | m | n | o | r | s | t | u | v |
Grammar
Sinaugoro is an agglutinative language with ergative alignment and subject–object–verb (SOV) word order.[5] Number is marked explicitly on the verb and freely within the noun phrase, but is not marked on the noun itself. A morphological distinction is made in Sinaugoro between the possession of alienable and inalienable nouns, and then between the alienable possession of edible and inedible objects.[6]
Verbal indexing of person and number in Sinaugoro makes freestanding personal pronouns optional. These are given below, displaying a distinction between inclusive and exclusive.
| singular | plural | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st person | exclusive | au | gai |
| inclusive | gita | ||
| 2nd person | goi | gomi | |
| 3rd person | gia | gia | |
Notes
- ^ Sinaugoro at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ Tauberschmidt (1999), p. 1
- ^ a b Tauberschmidt 1999, pp. 6–9.
- ^ SIL 1992.
- ^ Tauberschmidt (1999), p. 2
- ^ Tauberschmidt (1999), p. 14
- ^ Tauberschmidt (1999), p. 16-17
References
- Tauberschmidt, Gerhard (1999). A Grammar of Sinaugoro: an Austronesian language of the Central Province of Papua New Guinea (PDF). Pacific Linguistics Series C, Volume 143. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. doi:10.15144/PL-C143. hdl:1885/146187. ISBN 0-85883-490-1.
External links
- Sinaugoro phonology
- Sinaugoro dictionary
- Paradisec has multiple links to Sinaugoro language materials.