Lihir language
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The Lihir language is an Austronesian language spoken in the Lihir island group, in New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea. It is notable for having 5 levels of grammatical number: singular, dual, trial, paucal and plural.[1] It is questionable whether the trial is indeed trial or whether it is paucal, leaving there being a paucal and a greater paucal.[1] Either way, this is the highest number of levels of grammatical number in any language.[1] This distinction appears in both independent pronouns and possessor suffixes.[1] There is some variation in pronunciation and orthography between the main island Niolam, and some of the smaller islands in the group.
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d Corbett, Greville G. (2000). Number. Cambridge textbooks in linguistics. Cambridge University Press. p. 25. ISBN 0521649706, 9780521649704. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7jc-pgAFcE0C&pg=PA25&dq=lihir+language&lr=lang_en%7Clang_fr%7Clang_de&hl=ko&cd=4#v=onepage&q=lihir%20language&f=false. Retrieved 2010-05-26.
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