| Huli | |
|---|---|
 Huli Wigman from Hela Province of Papua New Guinea | |
| Region | Southern Highlands, Papua New Guinea |
| Ethnicity | Huli people |
| Native speakers | 150,000 (2011) |
| Language family | Trans-New Guinea?
|
| Writing system | Latin script (Huli alphabet) Huli Braille |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | hui |
| Glottolog | huli1244 |
Huli is a Tari language spoken by the Huli people of the Hela Province of Papua New Guinea. It has a pentadecimal (base-15) numeral system: ngui means 15, ngui ki means 15×2 = 30, and ngui ngui means 15×15 = 225.
Huli has a pandanus language called tayenda tu ha illili (bush divide taboo) used for collecting karuka nuts (anga) as well as hunting or traveling. Tayenda is used to evade malevolent bush spirits. The grammar for Tayenda is nearly identical to normal Huli, but the vocabulary is changed, often borrowing words from Duna but with changed meanings.
Phonology
Huli has a syllable structure of (C)V.
Vowels
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| Close | i ĩ | u ũ |
| Mid | e ẽ | o õ |
| Open | ɑ ɑ̃ | |
/ɑ/ is pronounced more fronted as before /r/ and /ʝ/.
Vowel nasality is phonemic in the language. Vowels can also carry three phonemic tones; high-falling, mid-level, and low-rising.
Consonants
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | ||||
| Stop | voiceless | p | t | k | |||
| voiced | b | d | g | ||||
| prenasal | ᵐb | ⁿd | ᵑɡ | ||||
| Fricative | ʝ | h | |||||
| Approximant | w | ɭ | |||||
| Trill | r | ||||||
Stops /p t k/ can become aspirated as .
Many speakers pronounce /t/ as before /i/.
/d/ is realized as voiceless as when occurring word-initially, and is palatalized as between /i/ and a word-final /ɑ/.
/r/ only occurs word-medially.
/b ɡ/ can be phonetically realized as fricatives intervocalically as .
References
- Huli at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ Goldman, Laurence (1983). "Talking about talk". Talk Never Dies: The Language of Huli Disputes. London and New York: Tavistock Publications. pp. 254–257. ISBN 978-0422782104. OCLC 993340993.
- Organised Phonology Data: Huli Language [HUI] Southern Highlands Province (PDF). 1992. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
- Lomas, Gabe (1988). The Huli language of Papua New Guinea. PhD Thesis, Macquarie University.
External links
- Timothy Usher, New Guinea World, Huli on New Guinea World
- Huli counting system Archived 2007-04-24 at the Wayback Machine
- Huli phonology
- "Counting and number in Huli", Brian Cheetam. Papua New Guinea Journal of Education
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