Sinaugoro language

Sinaugoro
Native to	Papua New Guinea
Region	Central Province
Native speakers	(18,000 cited 2000 census) [1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Western Oceanic Papuan Tip Central Sinagoro–Keapara Sinaugoro
Language codes
ISO 639-3	snc
Glottolog	sina1266

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

Sinaugoro alphabet ^[4]

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.

Personal pronouns in Sinaugoro ^[7]

		singular	plural
1st person	exclusive	au	gai
	inclusive		gita
2nd person		goi	gomi
3rd person		gia	gia

Notes

1. Sinaugoro at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. Tauberschmidt (1999) , p. 1
3. Tauberschmidt 1999, pp. 6–9.
4. SIL 1992. sfn error: no target: CITEREFSIL1992 (help)
5. Tauberschmidt (1999) , p. 2
6. Tauberschmidt (1999) , p. 14
7. 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.