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Nias language

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Nias language

Nias
Li Niha
Native to Indonesia
Region Nias and Batu Islands, North Sumatra
Native speakers
770,000  (2000 census)[1]
Austronesian
Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-2 nia
ISO 639-3 nia
Glottolog nias1242[2]

The Nias language is an Austronesian language spoken on Nias Island and the Batu Islands off the west coast of Sumatra in Indonesia. It is known as Li Niha by its native speakers. It belongs to the Northwest Sumatran subgroup which also includes Mentawai and the Batak languages.[3] It had about 770,000 speakers in 2000.[3] There are three main dialects: northern, central and southern.[4]

Dialects

The following dialects are distinguished in Ethnologue.

  • North dialect (particularly Gunung Sitoli) is the prestige dialect and lingua franca
  • South dialect (particularly Teluk Dalam variety) has lower prestige
  • Northwest dialect: Alasa area, west in Sirombu and Mandrehe areas
  • Central dialect: Gomo area, south in Teluk Dalam and Batu Islands.

Phonology

The southern dialect of Nias has the following phonemes:[5]

Vowels
  Front Сentral Back
Close i u
Mid e ⟨ö⟩ ɤ o
Open a
Consonants
  Labial Dental/
Alveolar 		Palato-
alveolar 		Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal m n        
Stop    b t
d
⟨ndr⟩ [dʳ] 		⟨c⟩ [tʃ]
⟨z⟩ [dʒ] 		  k
ɡ 		⟨'⟩ [ʔ]
Fricative ɸ
β 		s     ⟨kh⟩ [x] h
Approximant ⟨ß⟩ [ʋ] l   ⟨y⟩ [j] w  
Trills ⟨mb⟩ [ʙ] r        

The status of initial [ʔ] is not determined; there are no phonetic vowel-initial words in Nias. Northern Nias has /ŋ/ but not /c/; in addition, /z/ is pronounced [z].

Grammar

Nias has an ergative–absolutive alignment.[5] Unusually, it appears to be the absolutive (mutated) case which is marked, against the near-universal tendency to mark the ergative.[6]

There are no adjectives in Nias, with that function taken by verbs.[5]

Nias shows consonant mutation at the beginning of nouns and some other classes of words to show grammatical case. Several consonants are subject to mutation as shown in the table below. Where a word begins in a vowel, either n or g is added before the vowel; the choice of n or g is lexically conditioned. (For example, öri ~ nöri is 'village federation', öri ~ göri is 'bracelet'.)[5]

Initial mutations
Base form Mutated form
f v
t d
s z
c
k g
b mb
d ndr
vowel n + vowel
g + vowel

Other consonants do not change.

The unmutated form is used in citation. The mutated form only occurs on the first noun in a noun phrase (that is, not after a conjunction like 'and'). It is used for:

  • absolutive case (with a transitive verb, only in a main clause; with an intransitive verb, also in dependent clauses)
  • possessor (nouns only; pronouns take a genitive case)
  • object of most prepositions (pronouns take the genitive)
  • both arguments of some experiencer verbs, such as:
a-ta'u mba'e nono
stative-fear monkey.ABS child.ABS
'The monkey is afraid of the child'

Besides being the citation form, the unmutated form is used for:

  • ergative case
  • both arguments (A and P) in a dependent transitive clause
  • predicate nominal (with a copula)
  • with löna 'to not exist'
  • after some prepositions (such as faoma 'with (instrumental)')
  • topic

References

  1. ^ Nias at Ethnologue (17th ed., 2013)
  2. ^ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Nias". Glottolog 2.2. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. 
  3. ^ a b Lewis, M. Paul (ed.), 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/.
  4. ^ Brown, Lea (1997) Nominal Mutation in Nias. In: Odé, Cecilia & Wim Stokhof (1997) Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics, Rodopi, Amsterdam. ISBN 90-420-0253-0.
  5. ^ a b c d Brown, Lea (2005) Nias. In: Adelaar, Alexander & Nikolaus P. Himmelmann (eds.) (2005) The Austronesian Languages of Asia and Madagascar, Routledge, Abingdon. ISBN 0-7007-1286-0.
  6. ^ Donohue, Mark (2008). "Semantic alignment systems: what's what, and what's not". In Donohue, Mark & Søren Wichmann, eds. (2008). The Typology of Semantic Alignment. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 27

External links

  • Time for Nias Language to Enrich National Language An update for Nias Dictionary
  • Nias wordlist, Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database
  • Brown, Lea (2001): Grammar of Nias Selatan. PhD Thesis, University of Sidney. (PDF download available.)
  • Online dictionary of Nias
  • Kamus Nias-Indonesia (Nias-Indonesian Dictionary)
  • Articles on Nias Language (in Indonesian)
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