Sursurunga language


Sursurunga is an Oceanic language of New Ireland.

Phonology

Consonants

  • has two allophones: syllable initially and syllable finally.
  • has two allophones: syllable initially and ~ syllable finally.
  • has two allophones: syllable initially and ~~ syllable finally.
  • Voiced stops,, and only occur syllable initially. Plain and prenasalized voiced stops are in free variation word initially. Voiced stops are nasalized word-medially between vowels and after non-nasal consonants., a "voiced alveolar slightly retroflexed stop" is also heard word medially.
  • is syllable initially and finally.
  • is a "voiceless vocoid occurring word finally following a voiced vocoid of the same quality."
  • is syllable initially and syllable finally. It becomes after a rounded vowel.
  • is initially and finally.
  • Semivowels and only occur syllable initially.

Orthography

Sursurunga has fifteen consonants and six vowels.
is the velar nasal and is the schwa.

Number

Sursurunga is famous for having a five-way grammatical number distinction. The numbers beside singular, dual, and plural have been called trial and quadral; however, these numbers, which only occur on pronouns, indicate a minimum of three and four, not exactly three and four the way the dual indicates exactly two. They are equivalent to "a few" and "several", and Corbett has called them paucal and greater paucal. The trial cannot be used for dyadic kinship terms, whereas the quadral is used for two or three such pair relationships.
.iaugiurgimtulgimhatgim
.gitargittulgithatgit
iáugaurgamtulgamhatgam
-i/on/áidiardituldihatdi