Lihir language
Encyclopedia
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. It is questionable whether the trial is indeed trial or whether it is paucal, leaving there being a paucal and a greater paucal. Either way, this is the highest number of levels of grammatical number in any language. This distinction appears in both independent pronouns and possessor suffixes. There is some variation in pronunciation
and orthography
between the main island Niolam
, and some of the smaller islands in the group.
Lihir Group
Lihir Group is an island group in Papua New Guinea, located north of New Ireland, at . It is a part of Bismarck Archipelago. Largest island of the group is Lihir , other islands include: Mali, Mahur, Masahet and Sanambiet.- External links :* *...
island group, in New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...
. It is notable for having 5 levels of grammatical number
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
: singular, dual, trial, paucal and plural. It is questionable whether the trial is indeed trial or whether it is paucal, leaving there being a paucal and a greater paucal. Either way, this is the highest number of levels of grammatical number in any language. This distinction appears in both independent pronouns and possessor suffixes. There is some variation in pronunciation
Pronunciation
Pronunciation refers to the way a word or a language is spoken, or the manner in which someone utters a word. If one is said to have "correct pronunciation", then it refers to both within a particular dialect....
and orthography
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
between the main island Niolam
Lihir Island
Lihir Island is the largest island in the Lihir group of islands, 22 km long and 14.5 km wide, in Papua New Guinea's New Ireland Province. It consists of a complex of several overlapping basaltic stratovolcanoes rising 700m above sea level. While the volcanoes are not currently active,...
, and some of the smaller islands in the group.