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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. The language is closely related to Motu.

Phonology

Consonants

• /i/ is heard as a glide when in word-initial position before a vowel, or within a syllable or syllable-initial onset.
• /ɣ/ is heard as palatal when before front vowels.

Vowels

• Sounds /e, o/ are heard as when in stressed syllables, or when the nucleus of the following syllable is /a/ or /o/.

Writing system

Grammar

Sinaugoro is an agglutinative language with ergative alignment and subject–object–verb (SOV) word order. 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.

Verbal indexing of person and number in Sinaugoro makes freestanding personal pronouns optional. These are given below, displaying a distinction between inclusive and exclusive.

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.

• v
• t
• e

• Central Papuan Tip languages
• Languages of Central Province (Papua New Guinea)
• Western Oceanic language stubs