| Lihir | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in | Lihir Island, off New Ireland |
| Native speakers | 13,000 (date missing) |
| Language family |
Austronesian
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | lih |
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.